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Games and Gaming: What are You Working On?

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      CommentAuthorThunder_God
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006 edited
     # 1
    So over here Mo started a Roll call for what games are coming out at GenCon or whenabouts.

    So let's hear what you're working on, no matter how half-baked and far away it is.


    Are you planning on releasing this game sometime soon? What's it about? How close to completion are you? How, and with whom, are you publishing?
  2.  # 2
    My next project is The Fifth World, a fantasy using Clinton's Shadow of Yesterday rules, but based on the myths of the American Southwest. Specifically, the people have emerged into a world populated by monsters and are carving out their communities while surrounded by hostile beings. I'm going to be hitting that hardcore after Mortal Coil is done, with an aim to release next year around this time.
  3.  # 3
    Final polish on Cold City. Started writing 'Everlasting Empire', my putative alternative history Arthur C Clarke-meets-Dan Dare-meets-H G Wells RPG of the British Empire in space! What ho! Jolly good.

    Then there's revising 'Defenders of the Union', my entry for the November Ronnies. Really must get round to taking on board the various comments and getting it in a usable format.

    Cheers
    Malc
  4.  # 4
    My front-burner project is The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries... my Game Chef 2006 entry, a cross between pulp action, over-the-top storytelling, and drinking. I'm working on the revised version and hope to have a completed product ready for spring 2007.

    My other two projects are Today, my October Ronnies entry, and The Big House, a roleplaying game of prison drama. I'll be working on both here and there, and I would love to have The Big House completed sometime in 2007 as well.
    •  
      CommentAuthorBen Lehman
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 5
    Stuff.

    Also: Things.

    yrs--
    --Ben
  6.  # 6

    Under the Bed second edition is now being printed. Expect it up for sale again in a couple of weeks, both on my site and at Indie Press Revolution shortly thereafter.

    Shock: Social Science Fiction just mushroomed on me. A small, last-minute change has propagated other changes (curse you, Sorensen!) and there's still a lot of editing to fix. It's already 20 pages longer than originally anticipated and the substantial appendices are grossly underdeveloped.

    Making games is hard.

  7.  # 7
    Grey Ranks - teen love and home made machine guns, Warsaw, 1944 is next up.

    I'm itching to redesign my survival cannibalism parlor game Open Boat.

    My Game Chef game, Terra Nova, needs some love and a monkey wrench. So does my Ronnies entry Xochitlcozamalatl.

    Weird small projects abound as well.
    • CommentAuthorjaywalt
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 8
    Once Push is out, I'm gunning to finish Vesperteen, my psycho-narr sin + teenagers + monsters game. I have only a glimmer of what it will look like after the upcoming re-write, since my thoughts on design and play have developed quite a bit in the past 6 months. It'll be crazy weird and awesome, that's for sure.

    After Vesperteen, it's the untitled dream project about folkways, patterns of existence, and working with others to build your own personal mythology. Hopefully I'll be able to write this game at that point. In any case, this one'll be big and a tough game to write. It's basically gonna be a novella that teaches you how to play the game as you read it. (Yes, I am fucking nuts). Sorta Daniel Quinn style, with lots of dialogue intended to teach but not condescend.

    And then maybe a few short projects: Lions on the Precipice (Native American Dogs), Nine Suns Will Fall (apocolyptic divination disaster movie), When the Forms Exhaust Their Variety (this year's unfinished Game Chef entry), Children of the Revolution (Chinese revolutionary opera), and whatever else strikes the brain.
  9.  # 9
    ??Worker's Paradise?? and ??Greylight?? both need to be brought up to playtestable, and then they and ??Repertoire?? need first phase playtesting. Then it's a matter to culling and reworking the survivors.

    Now, the real trouble is, those are the _games_ that I'm working on. In terms of what I'm really working on, right now, I've got a couple of other projects that are unrelated to roleplaying that are already well overdue, and I'm loath to let them go until I've made milestones on them.

    All told, though, I'd rather see those three games, and their fetal counterparts, die a messy, violent death at the playtesting table (and some might say that ??Worker's Paradise?? already has) than slow, languid deaths of neglect and disinterest, so it may be that I at least clean up ??WP?? for testing if my current projects continue to frustrate me.
  10.  # 10
    I have just finished (this weekend) Monster Mash, the monster-playing supplement for Super Console. It goes out this Friday.

    I'm still working on Sufficiently Advanced, which will take a while, but which I fully expect to have released some day. Depending on other items taking up my time (cough*thesis*cough), it may be two years.

    I'm tossing ideas around for Console III (current working subtitle: "Do you remember 'do you remember love?' "), which seems to be much more a story-telling game than a role-playing game. Very narrative-heavy. Entirely different play sensibilities, same genre.

    And really, that's about it for now. We'll see how Monster Mash does before considering another supplement for Super Console.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJosh Roby
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 11
    Full Light, Full Steam and Agora: how shall we live will both be released at GenCon... SoCal.
    •  
      CommentAuthorEric Provost
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006 edited
     # 12
    Invisible Shepherds

    A team of government cyborgs hunts down and exterminates entities that the government refuses to admit exist. Team members have their own personal issues that must be reconciled with the idea that service before self means becoming less human.

    It's in pre-playtest form right now. Like brownie batter that hasn't even been poured into a pan for baking yet. I have no idea what, if anything, will become of it. But it excites me none the less.

    -Eric

  13.  # 13
    I'm working on the Battleaxe RPG 1.8 update. It may kill me.
    Once the 1.8 update is done the Sacrificial Magic sourcebook is waiting in the wings.

    I'm almost done with a first draft of Black Sunshine, a Post-Apoc RPG.

    I'm also working on trying to get the Jack Roman (project gamma ray) shit squared away. That should be a fun read if that ever comes out.
    •  
      CommentAuthorkleenestar
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006 edited
     # 14
    Current and semi-current role-playing game design projects:

    - Update Decade for this whole Game Chef thing. Yay!
    - The as-yet-unnamed Gormenghast-inspired RPG.
    - Tabula Rasa (which may have to be renamed), a Zola-inspired post-apocalyptic cross between fifties suburbia, the antebellum South, and a biotechnological near future.
    - Settlers of Manhattan (working, awful title) with my partner; lives of the young, glamorous and single in the Big City.
    - Lamed Vav, in which you play one of the only thirty-six people in the world who Matter. And this is really not good for you.
    - Teind, an evil-fairies game vaguely inspired by the middle section of Iron Dragon's Daughter in which some PCs become NPCs and vice versa at the end of each session.
    - Gloria Mundi, a vague ongoing attempt to turn our homebrew game of supernatural epic tragedy in ancient Rome into an actual playable, shareable game. This may be my fantasy heartbreaker unfortunately.

    I've also got a number of role-playing research, role-playing writing, computer game design, and card game design projects going on, but I think I would just be a little freaked out at my ability to accumulate projects if I listed them all. :)

    --Jess
    • CommentAuthorBryan
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006 edited
     # 15
    Pinnacle Empty Quiver is the only game that I'm working on. It's my Game Chef entry and is a game where the players take the role of an Anti-Terrorist Special Forces team racing against the clock to stop a nuke from exploding or the characters have the option of going rogue to rescue their loved ones who are being held hostage. Either they can disarm the nuke or save their loved ones from dying, but not both. I need to revise the text with the changes that I've made to the resolution system, skill system, character creation, and combat. And then playtest it from start to finish instead of piecemeal.

    I'm writing a Sci-Fi comic book script for my brother to illustrate. It's pretty cool in my mind, but not as cool on paper, but should be pretty cool once revised and illustrated. The setting would make a nice game world to explore.

    Not really game related, but originally sprung out of a game is my Book of Graph the book devoted to the worship and stories of Graph, the goddess of graphpaper, and Cheesecake, her disciple, and Water, Freedom and the Witch. I want to do a lulu book of the Book of Graph, because I'm running out of my last kinkos print run of the book and would like just to get a nice lulu copy for myself.
    •  
      CommentAuthorHoho
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 16

    Jess,

    Please finish said games. I want at least half of them, with the italics of desire.

    I'm "working" on Torchbearer, to the extent that my well of game fiction and examples ran dry and I'm trying to refill it.

    •  
      CommentAuthorkleenestar
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 17
    Hey, Shreyas, what do you want to see first? Other than Decade, I don't have any firm deadlines for finishing these projects in mind, so I'm definitely taking suggestions. :)

    --Jess
    •  
      CommentAuthorHoho
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 18

    Lamed Vav, Teind, and Gloria caught my eye first. Gormenghast sounds fascinating (based on your thread; I know crap-all about the source).

    • CommentAuthorthor
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 19
    Second for Teind - that was the best part of the book.

    Settlers - we need more games where you can be something like real people.
    • CommentAuthorthor
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 20
    Nothing at the moment, and I will probably keep it that way for a week or two while I digest Improand get the book club going. Then

    Esdemere complete rewrite so that the game can be played.
    Stone Soup Game first draft
    My Roman Briton Game First draft

    and two things I want to try but don't quite know what shape they will take.

    Monster Girls - a game where you play the teenage daughters of the golden age monsters: Dracula,Creature from the black Lagoon Mummy etc. In a scooby doo like setting where yo fight over the cute boy while solving simple mysteries.

    Airstream - My Hellboy meets Gravities rainbow game.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAdam Dray
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 21
    I'm working on Verge, a cyberpunk / post-cyberpunk / transhuman game that uses a sort of story map ("network") to create and record setting, character, and situation at startup and during play. The main website points to the older, boring version of the game. The new ideas are all still in this LiveJournal post and this one. It really is cool, I promise you.

    I also have a back-burner project called Pleiades, where AI FTL spaceships are a bit psychotic and think they're actually the deities for whom they were named, most of the technology to build them was lost, and what little that is known is meted out by greedy guilds. It's futuristic, space opera mixed with medieval/Renaissance guild craziness. In the game, the crew's ship is a character played by the GM, but given resources by the players (e.g., the pilot might spend his XP to improve the way the ship handles when he flies it, and that improves the ship stats for the GM). Each ship has its own crazy goals that more or less involve deifying it, warring with other "gods," and gaining power. Characters have personal goals, guild goals, and cultural goals -- most of which will conflict with the ship goals at some point in time. And the ships can shut down and refuse to play. Characters must use negotiation, diplomacy, and trickery to get their ships to do what they want.
    • CommentAuthormarkv
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 22
    Heads of State: nine short games about tyrants is 5/9th of the way playtested. Need to try the remaining four games, edit them all, and hopefully complete in 2006.

    a first draft of Manifesto! is 80% written and needs examples of play, more quotes from real manifestos, and before and after photos of a detourned board game, perhaps from a play test. In theory this could be completed and released in some form by the end of the year.

    War, Beauty, and Meaning (working title), a game that classifies wars as beautiful or ugly and purposeful or nihilistic, each of the 4 combos with its own rule modifications, is perhaps 40% drafted.

    Wine Dark Sea: the final voyage of Odysseus is lingering with its resolution rules now partly based on hexameter. I need to rewrite and expand a lot.

    Cage of Reason, a 2006 game chef entry, has been playtested once and I need to make the changes and write up some real enlightenment era figures as pre-made wrestlers.

    Capital of the Eternal Century, my other game chef entry, is in more preliminary form and needs a lot more setting info.

    Two Francs (working title) a game of exuberant, late-medieval urbanity inspired by Francois Villon and Francois Rabelais is mainly a very long list of weird lifepaths stolen an appendix to gargantua/pantagruel that Rabelais probably didn't write himself (ie "raving, doating churls," "hedge-whores," "tennis court-keepers boys.")

    Cul-de-sac: the soft end of the american dream is a working title with nearly zero writing but a few ideas

    manifesto, cage, and capital could potentially be released seperately and then eventually repackaged as components of a collection of games on modernist themes (working title: 18,19,20) -- assuming the dictator games don't burn me out on linked games

    need to focus
  23.  # 23
    Badass Space Marines is waiting on some more playtests, art and layout and it will be good to go.

    Then I want to go over Three Dooms and revise and expand it.

    In very early stages is a Jeeves & Wooster/P G Wodehouse style game.
  24.  # 24
    Still wanting to put up a revised version of Beast Hunters so that I can have people playtest it.

    Also, work on Saga continues, a game that's trying to consist only of rules that further story play and takes a few pages out of novel writing toolkits (ruling passions, conflicts change character traits, etc.).

    I've also started on a totally new version of Power/Evil, which is less an RPG now and more a full-blown strategy game with combat units and developing characters, with a narrative element. I've made up some freaky shit with dice on the table representing units and formations, I just have to see if it works out.
    •  
      CommentAuthorMatt
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 25
    I'm working on Covenant, a story game of failing conspiracies. It's currently heading towards final stages, but some really useful feedback has caused me to think about a total re-structure of the book.

    I hope to have it ready for GenCon...
    •  
      CommentAuthorAdam Dray
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 26
    Lots of cool ideas there, markv. Finish them up so we can play them!
    • CommentAuthortalysman
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 27

    Finish the solitaire (and collaborative!) dungeon crawl Depths of Kanthe and release it this year.

    Adapt this technique for a '40s/'50s retrofuture space-patrol-style RPG that I've wanted to do for a little while. Possibly release at end of year.

    Adapt same technique to occult horror, the gnostic/pseudopigraphia RPG that Jonathan Walton once challenged me to write. Release this early next year.

    Get in playtesting and further work on a bunch of other games that don't quite use the same techniques and definitely aren't playable solitaire: The Court of 9 Chambers, IceRunner, and Last Breath, for sure. Release date depends on availability of playtesters.

    Adapt some setting material from Depths of Kanthe to a companion adventure-with-a-GM game, unknown title. Release date: probably Fall 2007.

    Work on a series of generic RPG resources that evolved out of the plans for a book on GMless roleplaying: unknown release date.

    I have a lot of work to do.

    • CommentAuthorffilz
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 28
    Adam - Pleiades just sounds like fun.

    Frank
    • CommentAuthorJeph
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006 edited
     # 29

    markv wrote:

    Wine Dark Sea: the final voyage of Odysseus is lingering with its resolution rules now partly based on hexameter. I need to rewrite and expand a lot.

    That sounds really cool, mark. How did you base a resolution system on verse?

    As for my own projects, I've got two things on the front burner. The first I've posted about here a bit, and I'm tentatively calling it Sefer. It's a fantasy game with a communally created setting, except in our playtest the setting, being communally created, didn't turn out to be completely fantasy -- it's got zeppelins and railroads and muskets and shit. This makes me think that it being fantasy is an entirely unnecessary restriction.

    The other front-burner game, yet to be playtested, is (never) ASTROGATE!, which is about people who are unhappy with their life on Earth so leave and do cool shit like travel to ringworlds to fight alien bugs with magic. (n)A! is purposefully schizophrenic in a few ways: for instance, it places equal emphasis on a confronting personal issues and shit like swords that cut through time. As another example, the core system is rather sleek and simple and inspired in no small part by tSoY, but there are a few places where, in the interest of True Scientific Realism, it is recommended that you balance a chemical reaction or two, or estimate the approximate number of protons in a volume of gas, or find the square root of distance squared minus the speed of light squared times time squared.

    On the back burner, there's yet another revision of Exemplar, and a game about magicians.

    • CommentAuthorJudd
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 30
    Dictionary of Mu - this Sorcerer mini-supplement will be out at Gen Con. It is a swords & sorcery setting that is equal parts Howard's Kull, Burroughs' Barsoom and the Bible.

    1st Quest - this is a Shadow of Yesterday hack that I am putting together, inspired by young adult fantasy fiction, TSoY's mechanics and Brennan's ideas about Pools.

    Dirty Magic - is it a late night livejournal post or a full-on game? I have no idea. Time will tell.

    Riddle of Blood - this is a vicious medieval fantasy vampire setting originally writen for The Riddle of Steel but will probably be re-tooled for Burning Wheel when I have a moment. For now it is a pdf on a Yahoo Group. Y'know, I should put the pdf over at RPGtalk too.

    Oh, and there is a d20 project too that is nearly done. We'll see if that ever sees light of day.
    • CommentAuthormarkv
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2006
     # 31
    Jeph: about the verse impacting the system-

    If players 'speak in hexameter' in describing actions they get bonuses to resolution rolls.

    Dactyls etc. seemed too complex and fine grain so I’m using a simplistic version of hexameter. To receive bonuses, you have to state a sentence with six main elements (as in the six metrons or feet of a line of verse.)

    Names count as one element. Major parts of speech each count as an element. All people and creatures in the game have Homeric epithets like 'Hector, breaker of horses.' Players have to include an epithet every time they name their character in a sentence. Epithets take up between one and three spaces in a sentence depending on their length.

    Example: say that Odysseus has three epithets of different lengths:
    • rugged (1)
    • Sacker of Cities (2)
    • Zeus’s equal in his mind’s resource (3)

    During the game, his ship hits a reef and begins to sink. Here are 3 possible actions that combine his name, action description, and epithets that total 6 elements.

    • Odysseus (1), Zeus’s equal in his mind’s resource (3), Swims (1) to shore (1)
    • Odysseus (1), Sacker of cities (2), rescues (1) his men (1) with ropes (1)
    • Rugged (1) Odysseus (1) dives (1) to sea floor (1) to retrieve (1) provisions (1)

    Hitting this hexameter zone gives you an automatic bonus dice and lets you activate any advantages associated with the epithet you included. (For example the rugged epithet might include a bonus you could use for Odysseus holding his breath under water.)

    You can also narrate using your opponent’s name and epithet and gain access to the epithet’s disadvantage. Example, Odysseus and his crew are being pursued by an angry mob, so the GM narrates:

    Bow-legged (1) Odysseus (1) waddles (1) as fast as he can (1) but still falls behind (1) the other mariners (1)

    Credit for urging me to try to use grammar in some way in this game goes to the person who posts with the screen name emperor of ice cream
  32.  # 32

    Mark, that's pretty neat.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKuma
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 33
    Given that Time Traitor actually placed in Game Chef, I'll be revising, playtesting and re-releasing it for-profit as a PDF. I'm also considering bundling it with a couple other takes on the same setting with different systems, ergo: Time20.
    •  
      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 34
    The Meat Loaf LARP and, when I get the energy, another go at my Game Chef Entry, Euthymia.

    Also, All Thieves Are Gay Anyway, which I'm still rather excited about.

    I'm deeply excited about lots of things in this thread, including Committee For The Exploration Of Mysteries, hexameter resolution and something else I forget right now.

    Graham
    •  
      CommentAuthorrrr23
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006 edited
     # 35
    Currently thinking about:

    Terminal 5: a J G Ballard inspired game of airports, cars, sex, psychosis and west London suburbia.

    Greeneland: a Graham Greene inspired game of doubt, sin and cynicism.

    Actually working on when I have the time:

    Conduit: a sci-fi game of psychics who gain power by absorbing parts of other people's minds. (mechanically, in order to use a psychic power you must accept a new "emotional trait" proposed by another player. In order to use your psychic power you must play out the new trait to gain energy from it. Character's portrayal can be changed quite rapidly by other players by this, although the core of the character's aims and beliefs stays unchanged.)

    On the back burner for a while now as I'm stuck:

    Vendetta: a Ronnies entry from a while back. I want to revise it but haven't got round to it.

    Final Day a game of the last day on earth. The world is about to end. What are you going to do? Inspired by the film Last Night.

    Drew
  36.  # 36
    If half these games make it to publication it'll be an explosion of really great stuff.

    Jess, for Teind you should check out Vincent Baker's AG&G, yesterday.

    Interesting to see such a huge group of literature-inspired game ideas: Graham Greene, Mervyn Peake, Homer, J. G. Ballard, P. G. Wodehouse, Emile Zola.
    •  
      CommentAuthorThunder_God
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006 edited
     # 37
    Pleidas sounds very cool.
    Power/Evil interests me because it seems to me to be a CSI Game, which is something I'm going to put some effort into spreading and propagating.
    Hexamter, heh. Sounds "neat".

    What I'm working on?
    Cranium Rats will get a text revision when I can, but it won't progress any further before it gets playtested. I hope to release it by the end of the year, but again, wholly dependant on playtesting.
    Updated content can be found here, here and here.

    Slime Octopi and Coral will be a joined effort with Eric Bennett(OutofMind). Currently I have my Power 19 and awaiting his. He'll write most of the background with me writing most of the mechanics. I have some scribbling and have the mechanics' basis set down in my mind but have yet to write them down in an ordered manner.
    Progress waits until Eric finishes with his test season.

    Glass House and Rock will be my inspired by Game Chef 2006 game. It exists wholly in my brain and awaits me to write it down when I have my computer back(nothing is more annoying than doing work, which is now temporary, on others' computers). First draft will be released to be reviewed as if it were a GC entry, then revised and released as PDF.
    It may very well be up for free or for very cheap($3-5) as it'll be short, or it'll be included as an appendix to Cranium Rats, another way to accomplish the same deal(with The Uchtman Factor being the third angle on the Narr-Sim-Gamist triangle).

    Last but not least, I plan to work further on the idea of CSI Games, which I hope to make a free for use and actually used imprint.
    I've made a PBWiki for it, currently empty, which will go online in the next month.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAdam Dray
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 38
    Thanks for the props, Guy and Frank. It's good to see feedback in these threads -- they all too often just turn into a list of people talking but no one listening. Glad to see we're not that way here.

    John L.: I'd love to see a solid solitaire game or two. Do you mean solitaire as in one player + one GM, or just a player by his lonesome? Either is damned cool, if the design specifically makes such play rock. I've been considering ideas for one-on-one games lately, too.

    Drew: Conduit sounds very, very twisted. I like the in-game rationalization for meta-game sharing of character among players. Slick.
    • CommentAuthorherrmess
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 39

    The Book of Agran (working title, yeah) is slowly brewing under a lid in my head. It's sword-and-sorcery, where each player plays the same character in a different stage of his/her life, with lots of recurring stuff, curses, prophecies, flashbacks, drama and guts. Because it has so many possibilities for different types of story/game, I guess it really needs me to take one focused option and just go with it. And, well, time.

    Oh an Jess, Teind and Lamed Vav sound positively yummy.

    MarK.

    •  
      CommentAuthorkleenestar
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006 edited
     # 40
    Awesome! I think you guys have just convinced me to push Teind way up my to-do list. Of course, I also just found out that my book chapter is due this week, not three weeks from now like I'd planned, so I doubt I'll be doing much with it for a bit. :)

    Here are the things that are really making me drool:, Grey Ranks, Monster Girls, Pleiades (which I want to use for playing a really fucked-up version of the Culture!), The Book of Agran and Wine-Dark Sea. Also, I would totally play Euthymia but I've already read a couple of versions of it, so I've gotten my drooling out of the way.

    There are a ton of other things that sound really interesting from the title, but I have no idea what they are. Time to go mining old threads for details!
    •  
      CommentAuthorThunder_God
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006 edited
     # 41
    Yeah, I read the whole thread. Shit, I started it, no?

    He means Solitaire, one person does it all.

    Edit: While we are here, I'll point you at this thread, where I bring up several questions regarding Cranium Rats.
    Having them answered before I revise will save me another revision.
    • CommentAuthortalysman
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 42

    Adam:

    I'd love to see a solid solitaire game or two. Do you mean solitaire as in one player + one GM, or just a player by his lonesome? Either is damned cool, if the design specifically makes such play rock. I've been considering ideas for one-on-one games lately, too.

    Yes, true solitaire, one person playing against the dice (and book, to a certain extent.) Or group play without a GM, either as competitive play (against the dice and each other) or cooperative play (party against the dice,) although I'm debating whether cooperative play requires threat-scaling rules.

    The greatest thing about designing rpgs that are playable solitaire is: I can playtest the rules a heck of a lot easier, That's why the solitaire games on my to-do list are earlier in my queue than the others: I know I can finish them soon.

    Jason:

    Interesting to see such a huge group of literature-inspired game ideas: Graham Greene, Mervyn Peake, Homer, J. G. Ballard, P. G. Wodehouse, Emile Zola.

    Don't forget Robert W. Chambers. The King In Yellow is a major influence on Co9C, almost more so than the numerology.

    I'm interested in seeing Jonathan Walton's nameless folklore game and Mark's Wine Dark Sea, if nothing else than to see if such unusual mechanics can work.

  43.  # 43
    I forgot, I'm also working on Cancer the RPG, it's backburned and didn't get anywhere. My work on CR gave it a push, showing me how I want mechanics to be handled and showering me with the right "Thought processes".

    Backburned indefinitely, but now back on working schedule.
    Also "Pen", a small work thingy, will probably be less than 5 pages, where you use limericks, draw lines and so on as part of the mechanics. Background of 19th-20th century Hermetic Magicians sitting in their big chairs and competing.
  44.  # 44

    Jess, where can I read more about Lamed Vav?

    •  
      CommentAuthorkleenestar
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 45
    Right now, Lamed Vav and Teind exist only in my unreadable notes scattered across multiple notebooks. As soon as I'm out from under my current horrible pile of work, I'll be trying to collate some of them and posting design notes for comment.

    --Jess
  46.  # 46

    I'm playtesting the system for The Cog Wars. So far, pretty good, but lots of little rough patches to hammer out.

    I'm also working on my ideas for what I think I'm going to call Conflict 20, which is a d20 variant I've talked about before here.

    Uh, and some other stuff, in the deep background.

    • CommentAuthorJeph
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006
     # 47
    Jess, how'd you get 36? Gematria?
    •  
      CommentAuthorkleenestar
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2006 edited
     # 48
    The Lamed Vav.

    The rest will have to wait for me to find some more time and start a thread. :)

    --Jess
  49.  # 49
    Yes, Lamed Vav also appears in Sorcerer for MtAs.
    The 36 "Saints" who are pillars that uphold the world, kinda like Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, except for all of us.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJoey P
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2006
     # 50
    One day I'll post to a thread before it has a zillon replies. Not this day.

    I am currently working on The Dragon Vs The Gun My November Ronnies entry. Just managed to get rid of "...the stench of White Wolf" as the big man put it.
    Next time I'll do a D10 pool based system with a central humanity stat. Hang on a minute...

    I am also working on the ultimate wargame of ultimate destiny for Vincent Bakers Gamie-Gamies.
    (Rod) Hull Comes to FragTown. I'll buy you a drink if you get both the references.

    FragTown can be played solitaire too.
    •  
      CommentAuthorRob MacD
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2006 edited
     # 51
    The Empire Never Ended: mindblowing narrativism in Philip K. Dick's Ancient Rome.

    That, and parenthood.
  52.  # 52
    Phillip K Dick's Ancient Rome?

    The mind boggles...
    •  
      CommentAuthorRob MacD
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2006
     # 53
    The mind boggles...

    Thanks, T_G! That's the goal, anyway.
  54.  # 54
    Contract Work: Hitmen doing the job, trying to get out of debt. Heavy on resource management. This should see playtesting this month.

    For (much) later:
    LEO: Players are Loyalty Enforcement Officers of a dystopian citystate. Resource management again, but this time using your percieved fealty to the state.
    Bloodletting: Hong Kong Blood Opera. Faster than the eye fight combos, gun-fu, and Max Payne bullet dodging.
    Frights!: Horror movie game. Ripping off die mechanics from Sorceror.
    Unnamed Cyperpunk Heartbreaker: What Contract Work was going to be before I decided to start simple.
  55.  # 55
    So long it's intended :)

    gains, how will it be different from Exalted, WotG, Feng Shui, Fireborn, Wushu, etc?
    •  
      CommentAuthorAndy
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2006
     # 56
    BTW, This thread is really interesting. I've been reading all the replies as they've come in, though I haven't replied.

    Basically, it's like seeing a march of potentially awesome games. I seriously have to block my eyes and ears after a while from the Upcoming and focus on the Newly Released, because it's like being overwhelmed by beautiful colors, sights and smells, and if I don't shut off the input my head will explode.

    -Andy
  57.  # 57
    Newly Released is also overpowering, judging from the other thread.

    If a fifth of the games discussed here make it to GenCon 2007 release our minds and wallets will both implode!

    That's why you gave up Indy Game Award this year?
    •  
      CommentAuthorrrr23
    • CommentTimeMay 4th 2006
     # 58
    Adam Dray:

    Drew: Conduit sounds very, very twisted. I like the in-game rationalization for meta-game sharing of character among players. Slick.

    Thanks! There's also similar rules for playing mulitple characters and taking control of other characters within the game... :D The psychic PCs can split off a shard of their own mind and insert it in another, effectively gaining the player two characters to play. However, both characters are changed by the experience, as they effectively swap emotional traits.
  59.  # 59
    Okay, fine:

    I'm now working on Lion in Winter.

    I don't have time to work on it. I have other projects I should be doing.

    But I am working on it.
    • CommentAuthorwyrmwood
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2006 edited
     # 60
    First, I have a full course I'm planning to gear for publication:

    Times are Changing -

    Hunting for playtesters, art, and the like:

    Drift - Space opera inspired by near light speed travel. You come from a colony world on a circuit toured by a generation ship. Now you've been recruited to be an away team member for that ship. The only things that matter is what cultural truths you hold sacred, and what technological insights you possess, but both of those will change as you and your home drift further and further apart.

    Savagery - RPG of social and emotional combat. PCs are members of a club where they go and practice trying to take control of their lives, using that support they struggle against the people in their lives, seeking something, good or bad. One of the options in this game is basically Fight Club the RPG.

    Still in design:

    Revolutions - RPG of how a family deals with the changes in the world around them. Every revolution replaces something familiar with something new and strange, and players must decide if their characters will adjust or try to resist the changes.

    Coming of Age - This RPG begins with defining your character's destiny, and then defining the obstacles in the way of his or her achievement of that potential. As you play you overcome those obstacles coming into your own. Uses a communal adversity list, which allows players to choose the types and strengths of the adversity they will encounter.


    Past the full course, I have several RPGs I'm hoping to move towards publishable form:

    Pure Shoujo - A game inspired by general social twistiness. Has lots of interesting aspects, from relationship votes to a variable numbers of characters to player. Current playtesting has shown this game has a great deal of potential.

    Magic Academy - A RPG based on the various magical schools / club genre common in modern fantasy. Playtesting has also shown this game has significant potential, especially its design your own school capabilities.

    In the Box - In most RPGs you play something resembling a story. In the Box is an RPG where you play a poem, in particular a form based on the sestina.

    I'll post some time later about the other RPGs I'm designing or re-designing.

    - Mendel

    RPGs should not aspire to be art or fiction, they should aspire to transcend such things.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJMendes
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2006
     # 61
    Hey, :)

    I'm drudgingly putting together publishable rules for Power Plays.

    Cheers,
    J.
    •  
      CommentAuthorMeguey
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2006
     # 62
    Lamed Vav = interesting!
    • CommentAuthorMr. Teapot
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2006 edited
     # 63
    A game inspired by things like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. You play poor Jewish men living in a cold, grey ghetto in New York City, circa 1938. To work your way through life, you create technicolor fantasies of superheroes and science fiction aliens and horror stories, but these are reflections on your real life. The pulp stories and comics your characters contain aspects of their life: the evil jungle king of an adventure story is played by the player who also plays the slumlord threatening to evict the writer PC, and in writing about this slumlord, the writer can change his character and his circumstances.

    Right now very much in the half baked, far away stage, but reading more about Golden Age comic book creators helps focus my ideas on the game.
    •  
      CommentAuthorHoho
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2006
     # 64

    I just started working on Ninegun Choir again.

    • CommentAuthorjaywalt
    • CommentTimeMay 18th 2006
     # 65
    By a freak accident, I'm halfway through designing The Good Ship Revenge a.k.a. Yo Ho Ow! Emo Pirates! which is about the sex, death, and heartbreak surrounding the triple-threat love-triangle of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Jack Rackam (+ his Amazing Calico Dreamcoat). I explain the basic rules to Shreyas and Josh K here.

    And Shreyas' new Ninegun Choir stuff is hot. Even if it still looks like an Exalted hack :)
  66.  # 66
    Shreyas, you need to tell us about your game, no vague name-dropping!
    •  
      CommentAuthorHoho
    • CommentTimeMay 21st 2006
     # 67

    sighs and obeys
    There's a thread about the initial concept somewhere in Little Ideas.

    The concept has shifted slightly, but you can see what it came from there, and where it's going in my blog.

    • CommentAuthorTony Irwin
    • CommentTimeMay 21st 2006
     # 68
    If publishing includes "making it available on Lulu for self and friends", then I've just about finished a print edition Shoujo Story. A GMless card based game. I think it just crosses the line between "role-playing" and "story-telling" but I guess I'm at the right site for that!

    I'm starting revising a game of mine called Samurai Badges, simply because I don't feel I have the games I want to play. Was in Starbucks last week meeting some friends and we played a round of "MtG" simply because that's something we always make time for when we meet up. It struck me that there's barely any interaction in the game at all, it seems the real fun is in building decks by yourself at home. Yet the idea of a pull out your pocket and play game for friends who enjoy a mental challenge is really desirable. I'm trying to refocus Samurai Badges for one hour Starbucks type play, with clever/tricky MtG type fun. A lot of it will have to do with using the book in play - like having pictures of locations and pointing to which one you want to visit, and lots of lists of events and challenges to pick and choose from.
    •  
      CommentAuthorThunder_God
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2006 edited
     # 69
    Tony, your game(Shoujo Story) should go on the other Thread, since it's about to be released soon. Samurai Nadges is fine here.
    You're talking about Samurai Badges, but you're not really telling us what it's about.

    Shreyas, looks cool, but I want to note. Pointing people to your journal isn't the most helpful thing in the world, considering how many entries deal with food ;)
    And again, it looks cool, wicked cool. Though that may be my Hermetic knowledge speaking.
    Edit: Also, what are Nineguns...?
    • CommentAuthorjaywalt
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2006
     # 70
    I always assumed that nineguns are like sixguns... but you can reload 1/2 as often.
  71.  # 71
    Tony Irwin: How do I get on your friends list?
    •  
      CommentAuthorNeko Ewen
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2006
     # 72
    Too many things on the backburner thanks to being so busy lately.

    -Tokyo Heroes: Sentai and fighting magical girls; teams of heroes get emotional about stuff and beat the monster of the week. Needs work, but it's getting there.
    -Thrash 2.0: Some day I'll finish revising my fighting game martial arts RPG. Some day. Gamist. With an Action Point system that borrows heavily from Xenosaga. I've made some good progress, but there's lots of fiddly bits to write up.
    -Distorted Futures: "A dystopian ass-kicking RPG." The world is screwed up, and your heroes, wearing stylish, shiny clothing, go and kick ass until things get better. Still mostly just a concept.
    -My concept for a 24-hour RPG is a solo RPG about hikikomori, inspired by Welcome to NHK.
    -Catgirl: A tongue-in-cheek White Wolf style RPG about catgirls. It's weird. There's a lot of setting stuff I have to figure out.

    Publishing comes after playtesting and editing until the game stops sucking. ^^;
  73.  # 73
    Was Catgirl influenced by the fake covers thread on RPG.Net where we put up Anime covers of "Exalted"?
    •  
      CommentAuthorMo
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2006 edited
     # 74
    OK, I'll finally get around to doing this.

    Crime & Punishment of course... I'm still trying to get it to pub before Gencon.

    1000 Stories, a real life RPG of elegies converging on a single place. (With Brand). There's enough of this one together to be in playtest stage, but we haven't got our assesin gear long enough to produce the document.

    Asylum , a game of madness and perspective.

    Correspondence, a play by snail mail game.

    There's a whack of other bits in pieces that I haven't figured out what to do with as of yet.

    Shreyas: I love the name of Ninegun Choir. :)
    • CommentAuthorBlue
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2006
     # 75
    I am currently working on: "Manors and Machinations"

    Players play the beautiful people of the semi-historical Regency. They are seeking to make their way up the ladder of society and they do so through their interactions at the season-long house parties.
    •  
      CommentAuthorNeko Ewen
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2006
     # 76
    Was Catgirl influenced by the fake covers thread on RPG.Net where we put up Anime covers of "Exalted"?

    Very much so. ;)

    I know I want to stick stuff like kitsune and shinigami in the game off to the side, but I'm still kinda lost on what the main adversary should be...

    Charms in the game include "Nine Lives," "Just A Normal Girl" (good for hiding), and "Neko Neko Beam."
    •  
      CommentAuthorrossum
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2006
     # 77
    My front-and-center game is <a href="http://www.krilov.com/games/1984prime">1984 Prime</a>. Second burner, working with Judson, is Greylight. (Collaboration across time zones is teh suxx0r.) Whatever comes next is up to my muse- I still have way too many games to play.

    I've got four other noodles for non-RPG games, and I don't mean "Oh, they could be narrative parlor story action collaborative shared world-building resolution around a deconstructive examination of what it means to be human and in love and living in a shattered husk of reality as the gods die to become our dreams," but actually board and card games.

    Hm, that last mini-rant may have some beef on it.

    MDK
    • CommentAuthorjaywalt
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2006
     # 78
    Mo, you know there's already a cool game called Asylum, right? You play inmates and the mechanics are based on marbles, so YOU KEEP LOSING YOUR MARBLES!
    •  
      CommentAuthorMo
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2006 edited
     # 79
    Nope I didn't.

    I guess I need a new name!

    It was only the working title anyways.

    Since we're releasing Crime & Punishment on spaceanddeath, I thought about calling it Madness & Civiliazation.

    But 1000 Stories means that the and streak would end sometime anyway. ;)
    •  
      CommentAuthorrossum
    • CommentTimeMay 25th 2006
     # 80
    Coincidentally, I just grabbed Asylum from a used book store.

    MDK

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