I’ve been prowling the Federal depository for informational symbols. My idea is to use them as visual punctuation in Business Solutions, and I’ve got a pretty amusing assortment gathered so far. I think we’re going to have to do the paper quality ones – too dark, gritty, blurry, too light, blank – on our own.
Check out Beloved Jakub, which is Sven Holmstrom’s two player roleplaying game designed to be played over the telephone. It’s heavy as lead and can be played in way less than an hour. It reminds me of what I saw in A Day in the Life, but of course it is GMless. All the strong guidance is provided by the text itself, front-loaded in an introduction and then deeply enmeshed in a pair of tightly bound character backgrounds. I see huge potential in this approach.
I’m going to try to round up three people to playtest Business Solutions, play by post style, over at Snail’s Pace. If you are interested, go to that thread and let me know! It’s an experiment.
Steve and I cooked up a video demo for Grey Ranks. Part One and Part Two are available if you want to check them out – it’s a little goofy, but it’s an experiment. I’m interested to know if this is helpful as a pedagogical tool in understanding the game, and if it interests people in the game as a marketing tool. We’ll see on both counts. We shot it with a digital camera on a tripod, basically shot for shot, and then I edited it in the crappy “movie maker” app that ships with Windows. It was very much a rapid, simple production, and quite easy to do.
Also on YouTube: Some Polish kids playing live action Grey Ranks.
From atop a lichen-covered boulder, Helminth watched and steamed.
There was an old war beacon called, curiously, Feather-Lock, and it was choked with meat. A lone machine had been caught out, thirsty and bold from the thirst, and it was being swarmed. The pursuit played out beneath Helminth’s telescopic eye. Far below, there was a dusty trail through fields of millet as it ran on rusted legs. The meat gained. Read the rest of this entry »
