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My Plans for NaGa DeMon
2November 1, 2011
Last week I’ve posted about this year’s National Game Design Month (don’t let you distract by National, everyone may join the fray). I definitely want to contribute something this year, but when it comes to what I want to do I am still drawing a blank.
I still have a couple of old ideas floating around I could pick up for NaGa DeMon but for some reason that doesn’t feel right to me. I want my NaGa DeMon game to be something totally new. But for weeks now my creativity is at an all time low.
Basically I am currently hoping for a great idea that can be turned into a game into a couple of hours to a few days, so that I can use the rest of the month for doing the layout and playtesting the game. My first draft of WR&M was done in just 12 hours or so, so I think it’s not totally impossible to pull something like that off.
So the only thing I need now is inspiration and perhaps a few days of peace and quiet to get back into a creative mood. Wish me luck!
By the way, what are your plans for NaGa DeMon? Are you going to participate? Do you already have an idea what to do? As always any comments are highly appreciated.
NaGa DeMon, NaNoWriMo and Scrivener
4October 26, 2011
No, we’re not talking about demonic snake-like people from Indian mythology here. Nathan Russel, the guy who created the awesome FU RPG among other things, had a great idea. Why not take the idea from the National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) an bring it to the game table? So this year he challenges all of us to design a game in one month. This November will not just be NaNoWriMo but also Naga DeMon! And of course, the latter sounds much cooler! 
Of course there are a few rules (it wouldn’t be fun without those!):
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Create the game in November
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Finish the game in November
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Play the game in November
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Talk about your experience
By the way, the NaGa DeMon is not just about pen & paper RPGs. If you want to create a boardgame, wargame, cardgame or even a computer game, you can do so and it’s still part of the official NaGa DeMon! I am basically working on some game design project all the time, but perhaps I will use this event to see a project through next month!
And there’s one more thing. For a while I have followed the development of the Windows version of Scrivener. Scrivener is software that was initially developed for Mac only that was meant as a tool for writers. I think explaining all the features of this software would definitely be beyond the scope of this post, so it’s perhaps best you check out the official website for more details. What I have been wondering for a while now was if you could use Scrivener to help you in game design, too. And November may actually be my chance to do so!
You can get a special NaNoWriMo Trial Edition of Scrivener for free that you can use until December 7th. And if you are among the NaNoWriMo winners you’ll get a 50% discount on the full version of Scrivener. And even if you don’t manage to churn out a novel of 50,000 words next month, you still get a 20% discount by entering “NANOWRIMO” as coupon code at the purchase! 
But there’s more. I actually found a very interesting blog post on “Population: One” today, that shows how you can use Scrivener for RPG Writing. If you are interested in using Scrivener for NaGa DeMon, you definitely should check the article out.
Fleeting Moments: RPGs That End
1October 24, 2011
“The best way to plan a chronicle’s size is to come up with a number of sessions or months you’d like to lead it as a Storyteller, then reduce that by 20 percent.”
—Promethean: The Created, by Bill Bridges, Conrad Hubbard, et al.
Chapter 4: “Storytelling and Antagonists”
Everything ends, no matter how we may wish otherwise. Roleplaying games are no different. Sure, there are plenty of stories of twenty-year-long campaigns of Dungeons & Dragons to be heard; you might even know of or participate in one yourself. If so, congratulations! By and large, though, most games will end in a few months to a handful of years. Groups dissolve. Stories reach an end and have few other places to go. It is the way of things.
There are games out there that do not wait for the end to either blindside or creep up on the players. They often avoid the sweeping, epic scope of the “campaign” that is so familiar to Dungeons & Dragons and similar RPGs. These games are small affairs: sometimes filled with whimsy, sometimes bittersweet, and almost always with something to say.
I’m going to talk about those kinds of games for a short while. Then we’ll end.
As we must. (more…)
Mistborn
1October 21, 2011
Yesterday Crafty Games released its Mistborn Adventure Game Primer on DriveThruRPG for free. I have to admit I haven’t followed the development of the Mistborn Adventure Game at all. I haven’t heard of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels before and I thought it was just another run-of-the-mill fantasy series. Oh boy, was I wrong.
I also expected the game using Crafty Games’ Fantasy Craft system. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the game uses an all new system. Don’t get me wrong, I like Fantasy Craft. It’s a very cool rule system and I think more people should check it out. But it always was a bit too rules-heavy for me. It’s basically on the same crunch level as Pathfinder or D&D 3.5, but I just don’t have the time for such rules anymore. I want my game rules to be light. But I digress.
So yesterday I downloaded the aforementioned primer to see what all the fuss was about. And I was blown away. The rules are really, really light-weight and have a very narrativist feel to them. That was something I haven’t expected, but I like it. I like it a lot. I think I have to “borrow” some of their ideas for the game I am currently working on. I hope the Craft Games’ guys don’t mind. 
I also quickly realized that the game was no classic fantasy but sounded very unique and the world had some Victorian feel to it. At least that’s what the interior artwork reminded me of. I think I’ll have to get one of the Brandon Sanderson novels soon to learn more about the world. I already downloaded an excerpt from the Kindle book, but I haven’t had the time to give it a closer look.
Alas there are a few things I don’t really like about the primer. The description of the rules is terribly vague. I had to read the paragraph about how to read the dice results several times before I had a faint idea how it’s supposed to work. It get even worse when it comes to conflict. There’s talk of “action dice” you get, but there’s no explanation what these dice are, how many you get, and so on. Perhaps a few examples would have helped.
But overall the primer did what is was intended to do: it piqued my interest. It made me interested not only in the game, but also in the novel series. And I definitely recommend you check it out.
AncientScroll.pl goes English
2October 20, 2011
Fellow RPGBA member AncientScroll.pl is currently running a IndieGoGo fundraising campaign in order to get the funds to make the switch to English.
The Polish-language site releases free to use RPG adventure ideas on a regular basis. At this moment about 100 adventures are freely available for RPG fans to download and use for their games.
They now decided to make the switch to English in order to provide their material to a much broader audience. But in order to do so they need to raise enough money to pay for professional translators to keep up the quality.
Supporters will not only get satisfaction that they supported the RPG fan community but also all ebooks currently published by the Ancient Scroll for free! Don’t worry, these are already in English. In addition to that you’ll get your name and link in their partners section.
If you want to learn more about this, please check out the official campaign page.
First Look: Anima Prime
1October 20, 2011
Yesterday night I was browsing RPGNow in hopes of finding an interesting RPG I haven’t heard about yet. With thousands of titles on the site, it’s actually pretty easy to find stuff I haven’t seen before. What finally caught my interest was a game by the name of “Anima Prime – Steambots and Mega Swords”. Obviously the author of the book, Christian Griffen, set out to write a pen & paper game inspired by the Final Fantasy series of video games as well as Avatar: The Last Airbender and similar anime shows. It was just $10 and looked like I could like it, so I bought it.
While flipping through it I noticed that the game has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 US License. That means you can take the rules and design your own game around it and even sell it as long as you share it under a similar license and give the author of Anima Prime proper credit. You can also share material you wrote for Anima Prime under the same conditions. That’s always nice, especially because CC is much less complicated to work with than the OGL. There’s also a free edition available at the official site that comes in a simpler layout and without the artwork, but aside from that it should contain the same content as the paid version.
From what I’ve seen so far, the rules are not too complicated and the dice pool system it uses seems to work fine. Combat is a bit more elaborate and allows the characters to perform fancy moves, summon “eidolons” and there are “soulbound weapons” at the characters’ disposal.
The artwork and layout are pretty nice, especially if you are in the manga style. The 196-paged PDF also comes with a setting for you to play in, but the rules also contain quite a few tips on how to create your own setting.
All in all Anima Prime looks like a fun game. I’ve always wanted to run a game in a Final Fantasy-inspired world and it seems as if Anima Prime could handle this perfectly. If you are even remotely interested in the genre, you should at least check the free version out.
Two new WYRED releases
0October 19, 2011
I think I have talked about WYRED before. It’s a cyberpunk roleplaying game written by R.E. Davis aka Rev.Lazaro and powered by the Wyrm System. Today he released two new versions of it:
Rough Draft 5 is the final iteration of the normal d6-based rules. But he didn’t stop there. Rough Draft 6 uses a new d12 mechanic, which is something I actually planned for the SF variant of Wyrm. From what I’ve seen WYRED has a lot of promise and if you are into the genre you definitely should check it out!
You can get the details on both releases here.
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