Posted by Jason on April 23rd, 2006 — in Check this out dude, Design
So I have these burning ideas based on the improv class I’m in. Taking a scene and heightening it by interspersing related small scenes. Rewarding players for making connections between utterly disparate elements.
If you check this first stab out, you’ll note that the math is badly against you, especially in the last three scenes. This is mitigated a bit by the potential for lots of bonus points for bringing in setting elements in a 4-5 player game, and you are supposed to lose. Your reward for winning is not getting hurt. I may have to make it harsher rather than more forgiving. I’m liking the “scene doesn’t end until we run out of points, so you better keep coming up with cool-ass stuff for us to reward”, but I can see that going both ways – fun and lame. I stripped out the very complicated relationship and mission building formulae and replaced it with, basically, nothing, so I’m interested in what you all think. Comments and analysis very welcome.
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Posted by Jason on April 20th, 2006 — in Design
Inspired by V. Baker’s painfully awesome AG&G, I’m building a situation element generator into Grey Ranks. It was there all along, but instead of picking stuff, now it will be picked for you.
Vincent’s uses evocative but vague elements:
1 An ambitious farmer, hungry for gossip or silver.
2 The unscrupulous landlady of a roadside wayhouse.
3 A village executioner, practicing his trade on a caught burglar.
And I’m wondering if this is a good approach for GR, which takes a real documentary approach to the Warsaw Uprising. So I could go one of two ways:
WAY ONE, VINCENT STYLE
1 A Nazi officer with a dangerous plan.
2 A concentration camp commandant in unexpected distress.
3 A murderous foreign thug intent on a massacre.
WAY TWO, DOCUMENTARY STYLE
1 SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth, mass murderer and commander of the elite urban warfare unit Gruppe Reinefarth.
2 SS-Hauptscharführer August Kretschmann, commandant of the Gęsiówka concentration camp, stuck with a pair of flat tires.
3 Ayaz Hesuinov, a particularly brutal Azeri officer of RONA, herding civilians into the Wola football stadium.
In some ways the same, in some different. The latter provides names (important) but constrains invention. The former allows free-wheeling associations, but kicks my documentarian goals in the teeth.
Thoughts are welcome! I need some fresh eyes.
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Posted by Jason on April 20th, 2006 — in Design
A while ago a friend lent me a tattered copy of J.W. Buel’s The World’s Unknown, which is an 1898 compilation of sensational articles he wrote for Leslie’s Magazine.
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Posted by Jason on April 19th, 2006 — in Design
I’ve been over this with some folks, but obviously not enough – what do we charge for Drowning and Falling?
It’ll be gloriously illustrated. It’ll be functional and fun for an evening’s one-shot, an occasional two hour fiesta. It’ll be, I’m guessing, 48 pages long tops. Production costs – wild guess – call it $5.
Everything above that goes straight to an extremely worthwhile charity. So what do we charge? What would you pay, knowing that the profits go to a good cause? There’s a price break-point out there somewhere that makes D&F pragmatically attractive and a higher point that altruism will allow. What do you think?
Posted by Jason on April 18th, 2006 — in Design
We’re closing in on 100 sales of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, which is very gratifying. We’ve re-ordered after making a ton of minor errata fixes and there should only be a minor interruption once we sell our last copy of the first printing.
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