Fair Play
Posted by Jason on February 25th, 2010 — in Conventions, Cowboys With Big Hearts, Medical Hospital
Dreamation 2010 was frickin’ awesome.
Cowboys With Big Hearts needs some GM advice and structure. I’m thinking: To “unlock” your Keepsake, at any time you have a flashback tying you to the orphans. Until then you can’t use it. Or maybe you have to tie the keepsake to the orphans in the flashback. That might be fun. Then it is color scene/big conflict/color/big/color/showdown. So maybe: Phoenix / Apaches / Train robber friends / rockslide / weirdo preacher / Death Brothers (that was the Dreamation game), with stuff slotted in as a GM prefers, with many options. I don’t think the rules can be well presented on cards.
Medical Hospital – procedure timing was wrong, wrong, wrong. Trauma doesn’t work right. You need to be able to earn Pull in roleplaying scenes (by hitting the A-Plot maybe?) but I want to avoid state tracking so badly! If the RP game can stand alone like the arts-and-crafts game can, that is a good thing. Big thanks to Eric, Witt and Laura who “got it” and really chewed the scenery. The game is cluttered with stuff, which I need to think about. Lots of bits swirling around. Viz the RP half of the play space:
My interest in structured freeform is rekindled. I want to write a larp now. I want to play in a larp now, perhaps before writing one. A conversation with John S. and Frank M. really got me thinking about how to port what is good about what I already do to a different medium.
Seven sessions of Fiasco were run – three by me – and it wasn’t enough. I’m so grateful for the warm reception the game has gotten. I’m also happy that I can run it endlessly and not get tired of it. I couldn’t run three games of Grey Ranks that way, or The Roach.
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Posted by Jason on November 16th, 2009 — in Conventions, Cowboys With Big Hearts, Playtest
I got a chance to playtest Cowboys With Big Hearts again on Saturday at Ice Station Nerdly. It went surprisingly well! Here are the 54 cards:
I printed out the card content onto Avery 5263 labels and stuck them on color-coded index cards. The finished version will be 2.5″ by 3.5″ playing cards. Here’s us playing:
One player had never played a roleplaying game before that day. She was fantastic, as you might expect. The game is a weird mix of extremely heavy, old school GM authority and completely player-driven action. I think it may end up being tricky to get right, but I may be mistaken. The new RPGer said “This is really fun. I want to run this at PAX east next spring” to which I said “OK!”.
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Posted by Jason on September 20th, 2009 — in Check this out dude, Conventions
I had a wonderful time and some very dedicated, gracious hosts. Big thanks for Flavio, Renato, and Guilia, who treated Autumn and I with a generosity and kindness I hope we can someday repay. I feel like I made some friends.
The Janus team really impressed me and I am now certain that working with them for Italian translations of our games (and hopefully other projects) is the right move, for sure. They have a collegial relationship with Narrativa, but as a quasi not-for-profit I think Janus’ attitude and interests align with ours very well. Here’s Flavio with some of the games in his garage (both Janus and Narrativa). Here’s the Italian version of the Jeepform game Doubt, the awesome packaging and opened up.
They set up a game day in Chivasso, a cute little town near Turin with its own Facebook page and a kick-ass gaming club, the Revelsh Blind Beholders. Here’s One Cool Thing I Saw In Chivasso. At Chivasso somebody had an ebook reader with a certain PDF on board.
And finally, so you don’t think we didn’t soak up some culture, here are some lascivious marionettes from Munich’s Stadtmuseum.
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Posted by Jason on June 1st, 2009 — in Check this out dude, Conventions, Fiasco, Playtest
I’m back from the fourth Camp Nerdly, and being back feels good, like a corner has been turned. It was wonderful to reconnect with my scattered friends and feel the Nerdly vibe again. It was especially good to hang out with folks from far afield, like Dave Younce and Ryan Macklin. I’d stepped back from organization this year and it was a pleasure to just do my chore and forget about it, knowing there would be food on the table and a clean bathroom. Thank Clinton and the organizers if you had a trouble-free, fun event! Those guys worked their asses off. The weather was great on Saturday, best ever. The food was good and plentiful and the bacon was a big hit. The games were also good, although I didn’t have any great sessions this year. A Taste For Murder was a fun playtest, but a playtest nonetheless. How We Came To Live Here, which I had been greatly looking forward to, sort of got dominated by one participant and wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped it would be. I think it seriously suffered form the compressed con game format. Fiasco went well, but was very subdued – everybody chose the more mellow options in the suburban playset, so it ended up being a family relationship drama rather than unfettered chaos. Because of this, the aftermath didn’t really click well for me and I need to think about that. Montsegur 1244 was solid, but we started at a leisurely pace and then had to play catch-up, and Emily Boss had to leave early for her chore, which sucked. And the Freeform playtest/sampler event didn’t live up to my very high expectations – the playtest part was good and informative, and the full game just wasn’t that fun for me. I think I am alone in that assessment, though, and people were using the techniques we’d just taught, so that’s a good thing. I had a lot of good conversations, made some new friends, spent really pleasant hours with people I love and respect, and came home fired up to do some new things.
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Posted by Jason on February 25th, 2009 — in Check this out dude, Conventions, Playtest
Dreamation doesn’t really need much fixing, but Vinny Salzillo, who organizes and runs it, brought the indie community a list of concerns that he’d like help addressing. It’s to our mutual benefit to straighten this stuff out, even the bits that are not really our problem. So I have some suggestions, after each of his paraphrased concerns.
But before I start pontificating, one major thing that would be helpful all around is to migrate Vinny to a registration system that does not involve steam and punch cards. This isn’t our job but we know people and can make recommendations, and we should.
He doesn’t want to do things half-assed. Please don’t submit things that are unprofessional or poorly branded or sloppily presented.
Since we aggregate most of our games in advance, we can incorporate an editing pass before they are submitted. I’d be glad to do this and I bet we could even find someone competent to do it.
There were games scheduled for 4 people that had 27 people who wanted to play. This is bad for everybody. 3-4 person tables are disastrous for the system from his perspective and made his job harder. It breeds resentment because there is demand and people get turned away.
One idea is to follow the ALA author model – at ALA conventions, you get to hang out with authors and there is a lot of appeal to that, but they are few and the librarians are many. So the authors spend X amount of time with each group, hob-nob a bit, and move on. In game terms, this would mean the ever-popular Fred Hicks would arrange for three simultaneous games of Don’t Rest Your Head, and run none of them himself. Instead, he’d hang with group A at the beginning, move over to group B at the break, and do a post-mortem with group C. Everybody gets some Fred time. This isn’t ideal but it is one way to address the issue. I’m certain there are others. Honestly, this is the only thing on Vinny’s list that requires much thought.
He’d like people to produce a finished “module” explicitly for the convention. Make it unique and sexy, offer it multiple times simultaneously. Make it specific to the con, make each section unique, even if the game doesn’t need it (like carry, for example).
Part of the editing pass is making sure each event section has an evocative and unique title and that we highlight the Dreamation-only nature of it.
Playtests are problematic, because other designers get into them and shut out the general public, who are disappointed and frustrated. Part of the problem is that “pink badges” have priority and select these. His suggested solution is a “professional” track.
This is Vinny’s problem for the most part. If he privileges GMs less it goes away. Maybe that’s a fine line but I don’t think so – for the sake of argument, say that as a GM I am guaranteed one play slot of my choice but kicked to the bottom of the list otherwise. I am still happy, I still get to play How We Came To Live Here, and the rest is dumb luck or pick-up play or discovery. Personally I don’t want to playtest with a bunch of designer ponces.
So that’s it – I’m not suggesting these are the best solutions, but the magnitude of the challenge is not great. Let’s talk about it and fix it with a minimum of Internet drama.
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