|
After a week in denial, I'm going to have to tap out. I went from having 75% free time during my work week, to absolutely none in the space of a few days. Best of luck to those who have survived thus far, it was a fun exercise.
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 03:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 09:18 |
|
|
So a surprise visit from my in-laws (and a 9 week old baby) meant that my weekend of writing was gone. I'm nearly done with my playable draft and can turn one in by end of week at the latest, BUT, I don't think I'll have the ability to playtest another person's game in the foreseeable future. Because of that, I probably need to remove myself from the prize running, but I still plan to at least finish the draft because this has been super fun.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 14:26
|
|
|
I have completed my playtest of Hungry For You. How should I deliver the responses?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 05:56
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:I have completed my playtest of Hungry For You. How should I deliver the responses? Please post a writeup or similar document here -- whatever you might have. Also, because I screwed up and didn't post this: PART FOUR: PLAYTESTING Playtest someone else's game that has a playable draft posted! Post some kind of log/writeup/recording/whatever to the thread with your thoughts and feelings; anything that demonstrates that you ran a playtest will be fine. Deadline is Monday Night, October 10th to give people adequate time, and because why shouldn't a September contest end in mid-October? (Obviously, if everyone still in posts a playtest before then, I'll see about judging ASAP.) BONUS CHALLENGE 4: INADVISABLE STRETCH GOALS, PART 2 So, hey, remember that inadvisable stretch goal you may have developed last week, or not? Now is the time to actually write it. Your delivery date looms!!
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 06:02
|
|
|
Can you post/compile a list of Playtests available and which are already taken?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 09:42
|
|
|
I hate doing this, but I'll have to step out. This was my first attempt at designing an RPG, and honestly I probably started with a concept that's too ambitious to do in a month. I really want to continue working on it though, so I'll continue to update as I have time!
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 15:39
|
|
|
Hungry For You Playtest Playtime I prepped for 4 hours including reading the game and printing character sheets (I had a bit of a printer fiasco) I spent 1 hours explaining the game. We played for 2.25 hours. 3 players, 4 play phases Summary H played as a politician who was trying to get rid of his manipulating wife and make it as a writer. A played a literal Cat burglar, in that the character stole rare cats and fenced them to an animal smuggling ring. They were aiming for one big score. The smuggling ring was led by Jacques who's primary character trait ended up being "He doesn't smoke, he has other vices... Well, he only smokes cats." J played a jazz musician who wanted the adoration of the tastemakers. He was later replaced by a similar jazz musician who was in the mob. I pushed a bit to get some overflow and ended up with J's character playing himself to death as a speakeasy burned down. H's wife turned out to be J's second character's lover, and the owner of A's big score. In the final scene A stole the hope kitten from the penthouse while H's machinations to ruin his wife at J's big performance went off without a hitch. In the end A had the last word, narrating the ending for all the characters with a voice over. H was a failure as a writer but somehow ended up as mayor. J was a failure as a musician (after he suffered a stroke on stage in front of everyone in town) but hooked back up with H's wife after their divorce, and A and the cat took the last steamer out of town because they just couldn't bear to part with that cat. Survey Results On a scale of 1 - 5, where 1 is completely disagree and 5 is completely agree, This game was well suited to our group. Me: 3 H: 4 A: 4 J: 2, "We're sort of bad with games that have a serious tone." This game captured the feeling of the song (or at least the title) Hungry For You Me: 2, But that's partially on me not pushing the players enough. H: 3 A: 3 J: 3 The game captured the feel of at least one of the following: Monte Cook Games, 90's story games, 'a revolutionary game' written by someone who has only played D&D. Me: 4 H: 5, "This is not a negative." A: Don't Know J: 4 I would like to play this game again. Me: 2, I don't think I have the background I would need in film noir to sustain too many plays of this without it getting boring. H: 4 A: 3 J: 2 What was your favorite thing about this game? Me: Easy setup, an improvisable game setting H: "I really liked using Blackjack to resolve tests. [Thematic?] Interaction with the environments. The way the story lines came together." (Again, I'm responsible for that last one.) A: "Blackjack Resolution mechanic" J: "Plenty of room for improv and story telling" What one change would you make to the game? Me: Making the call on telling player's to move SAM items didn't feel real clear to me. I also didn't catch on right away when stats reset to the origin. I have some concerns about the blackjack mechanic because from 12 hands we hit 3 'real' blackjacks which bypasses the SAM. H: "I wish the GM had more say in the effect of overflow." "I wish there rules were clearer about which stat you used in the deal." (This might also have been my fault.) A: "Grid" I think they felt like the grid was disconnected from play and disrupted the flow of the blackjack hands. J: "Didn't like the cards, maybe try another resolution mechanic?"
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 03:34
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:Can you post/compile a list of Playtests available and which are already taken? In chronological order with bold titles are taken, Truth Hits Everybody Can't Stand Losing You No Thyme This Time Too Much Information When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around Hungry For You
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 04:30
|
|
|
Antivehicular posted:BONUS CHALLENGE 4: INADVISABLE STRETCH GOALS, PART 2 gently caress. Well, I'm the one who walked right into it with a detailed outline, and I haven't skipped over one of these yet. Time to see if I can pull this off. Anyways, I'm gonna go ahead and play-test Truth Hits Everybody. I'll need to go brush up on how Roll20 does card dealing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 04:33
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:Can you post/compile a list of Playtests available and which are already taken? Sure. Here are the games that have playable drafts posted: potatocubed's Can't Stand Losing You Mr.Misfit's Truth Hits Everybody (presumably not of playtest interest to you specifically, but, y'know) Free Cog's Too Much Information DalaranJ's When The World Is Running Down You Make The Best Of What's Still Around Rather Watch Them's Hungry For You has been playtested, so I'd prefer that be avoided by anyone who still needs to playtest something.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 04:43
|
|
|
Excellent. I think Iīll go for Too Much Information, should be able to get that squeezed in the coming week at the latest Oct 6th for a playtest. Will report back on the results afterwards 
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 06:20
|
|
|
By the way, I ran my playtest in person, because of course I had to use the SAM charts. 'A' texted me the other day and said they wanted to change their favorite thing to the reuse of rooms across characters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2016 18:56
|
|
|
Hey DalaranJ, do you have diagrams of the circuit diagrams that When The World players need to calculate equipment? Or is that a joke I didn't get?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2016 14:46
|
|
|
I had the opportunity to play-test Truth Hits Everybody last Friday. The session was online, and I created a custom Destiny deck for Roll20 in order to play it. The group size was two players. Thanks to a series of incidents, up to and including a storm that ripped off a huge branch of a tree and dropped it in my front yard, the play-test session ended a earlier than I would have liked. Still, we managed to come away testing the character creation and task resolution system and we also had a round of combat. In total, the play-test was about two and a half hours. The characters made for the play-test were: Trevor: Brought up by a well-off single parent, he kept to himself as a loner, and dilly-dallied around after school. He concentrated on supporting his partner. He became a member of T.H.E. after his partner betrayed him because they were after him. He fought for his life and won, barely. He has the Ethos of The Lover. Trevor's player is very familiar with the works of Monte Cook, and was a 3.x expert in its heyday. Texas: Brought up on the mean streets of Hartford, Connecticut, he flunked out of school and went for Law Enforcement. He currently runs Imperial Security, a vaguely named business that mostly serves as a cover for T.H.E. activity. He became a member of T.H.E. after being ushered in after the betrayal of his cop partner. The organization cut him an unspecified deal in exchange for being an agent. He has the Ethos of The Ruler. Texas's player ran and played many role-playing games during the 90s, especially Deadlands. The characters were generated using the life-path system. Initial impressions of the life-path system was that it was a useful way to build a character. However, the options on each life-path chart were ran the gamut between being vague and being very specific, so occasionally players had to pick options on the life-path that only slightly fit their concept. Because the Equipment phase came at the end of the rules, and it was unclear that player should save their points to build up Resources, they had no points to spend on them. For the purposes of play-testing, I gave each player Resources 3. The session was generated using Chapter 9's Mission Generator. Specifically it was: Who: Another Cell Where: Private Apartment How: Kidnapping Why: Possession Using these four aspects, I was able to create the plot to an adventure within minutes. Trevor and Texas are members of Cell #T-8, a very tiny cell somewhere in New England. Cell #A alerted them that Cell #T-7's outpost has gone dark thanks to a riot during the hottest day on record. The combination of Cell #T-7's patrols and experiments with the Dreamscape and parts of their apartment complex melting from the heat created a Seep. The Unwished that have crawled out of the Seep have possessed the minds of other members of the neighborhood, driving them to hold the entire apartment complex hostage. Using a law enforcement officer sympathetic to the cause, Cell #T-8 must infiltrate the complex, rescue their fellow cell, and shut the Seep for good. Truth Hits Everybody's task resolution system basically works, though there are some significant issues. The first is that the two charts for target numbers have different values depending on whether or not one is reading the mechanics chapter of the book or using collection of tables at the end of the book. I learned this halfway into the session, though I only used the target number table at the end of the book. The second issue is that the task resolution did not feel very satisfying to the players. Texas kept his skills well-rounded and did not get to Draw a Hand as often as Trevor, who has specialized in Investigation and Scrutiny. The players Squeezed their cards often, and the only failures and partial successes came from when their cards could not be Squeezed high enough. This felt unsatisfying to the players, who felt that Squeezing Cards made the game a bit too easy to play. They felt that there was very little reason to ever Squeeze Cards beyond the target number, and when dealt enough cards that could not create a hand, would choose to just Squeeze for the lowest but closest value possible. They were also disappointed that the attributes seem to have very little presence in the basic task resolution. The third issue comes from a Game Coordinator perspective. Two values to represent difficulty means that I had to spend much of my time referencing the chart. While the second chart is more intuitive than the first because it goes up by a scale of five, the Difficulties feel a bit arbitrary. Even with Card Squeezing leading to many successes, I was never sure why I would need ten difficulty levels. For the single round of combat, I had the players face a Possessed, a Small Unwished, and a Medium Unwished. This round of combat took quite a while, as even the enemies with the lowest amount of Stress only took small amounts of damage. Dropping their Stress values by 5 would seem to be the most effective change. Other than that, combat's issues are very similar to issues with the game's task resolution system. Because we had to cut the session short, Dreamscape and Ethos rules were not able to be tested. The final conclusion that we had about Truth Hits Everybody is that the game has potential, but is in need of some streamlining.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2016 15:30
|
|
|
potatocubed posted:Hey DalaranJ, do you have diagrams of the circuit diagrams that When The World players need to calculate equipment? Or is that a joke I didn't get? Oh, I thought it was fairly understandable that they were single loops. I can draw up a diagram for you quickly though. Edit: I mean I should have provided a printable version with the game probably.  Do the diagrams make any more sense now? I'd be happy to answer questions. DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Oct 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 00:01
|
|
|
Oh right, that makes sense now I see it. Never underestimate the density of your audience! (In this case, me.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 08:40
|
|
|
Yay, finished my playtest of Too Much Information [TMI] about an hour ago, most impressions are still just as fresh as they need be. Anyway, my group of 3 persons: L played a hotheaded young doctor, who was captured from her hospital bed after the first Library experience and secretly working without probation. D played a wily little snotball of a used car salesman with a pitch too good to be true on the run from the italian mob. T played a quiet, young and rich serial axe murderer who was captured from his latest escapades to disappear from the public stage. As you can see, a volatile, yet fun combination. We started by listening to music from 1990, watching a few movie trailer snippets and some news from the year to get into the right frame of mind of the earliest 90s. After a base explanation of the system and purpose of what we are supposed to do I lead each and everyone into a small framed scene of their respective "first time" with the library and then had them all captured by FURNACE as part of a MIB hit squad. After several hours of incarceration they got snippets of what was going on with the whole situation and then were thrown into a briefing room where they were told what great heroes they were, of the service they were doing for their country and all that shishkebab. Afterwards they were brought to "Room 101", which at this point had them already on their toes. After being bound and attached to "The Machine" and seeing the doctors around them working, they tried their first escape, which was handled by the MIBs nearby. Then they were pushed into the situation with a seasoned old veteran of 4 previous runs that basically got to spill some more exposition beans to them. Naturally, as they entered the first chamber, he explained some of the mechanics to them, even though they still believed this to be some shared hallucinogenic dream or LSD trip gone badwrongfuntimes. Their first chamber was the memory of being frozen alive and they had to fight the "clawing wind" and "biting cold"on their way to the warmth, which failed after the first real threat encounter task resolution. Afterwards I was a bit more lenient and let them, after a smaller encounter, basically get on with it. They continued on into a chamber of "Soylent Green Factory"-style murderous machines where humans where the cattle which led to incredibly interesting scenes of description as they noted how entire hordes of people were led onto factory grounds and "processed". Apparently Iīm describing way too bloody, as I was told that the description of humans being treated like chicken (even if only astral construct humans) was kinda "icky". After a dangerous encounter with an automated electric saw as a threat encounter, which they defeated in two encounters after it almost sawed D in half, with L shooting it to pieces, they fled the place via escape chamber door. Next they entered the graveyard of feelings, where love was buried eternal. Here they encountered their first HOMO GESTALT, a monstrous creature of multiple arms, legs and heads all combined, in which they recognized the seasoned veteran from the entrance chamber, which told them what happened to those who were "eaten" by the library. Can you spell horror? What ensued was a grueling run-and-gun with the creature as they basically went all Romero at it, only to realize that it was trying to bury their target, a half-dead soviet double agent. The agent, confused, drunk, and very russian, was immediately knocked out, picked up, and taken into the next chamber as they were getting the hang of it. Now we came to Ancient Egypt, where a Sphinx was waiting for them to solve a riddle or face the consequences. Unfortunately the riddle was solved accidentally and no one wanted to know what the Sphinx would have done otherwise, so they quickly move on with the agent in tow. Finally, entering a post-apocalyptic wasteland called "Boston 2019, British Colonial Ground", they encountered Agents of the Order of the Silver Moon, two funky, hip and incredibly smooth dutch crusaders, that were also after the russian bastard. This led to the first and only soliloquy of the evening into a scene of a money bust gone wrong for D, while T quietly went for another axe. Afterwards, they finally found the escape chamber and finally fled. From a gameplay perspective all had MASSIVE FUN, but then we didnīt really take it all that serious to begin with. What did come up was that the Aether rules seem incredibly vague from a rules perspective and need a rework. This combines into the way Aether works, as it means that the GM is working against the players, instead of with them, which felt both disconnected and antagonistic to us. On a positive note where the memory, secret and identity as it meant both great amounts of roleplaying and incredible scene framing and building happened with the players, and everyone was able to express their characters deeply into what was given. On the other hand, the entire damage mechanic felt problematic, as it meant too little, if the GM wasnīt antagonistic enough to increase every threat harshly, and one didnīt need all that many checkmarks to begin with, especially if you constantly raised both sides. This also fed into the "GM VS PLAYERS" idea and felt well...a bit backwards, to tell the truth. From a GM perspective, I also found it incredibly harsh, as the creative drive you need to make the chambers both a) memorable and b) different is punishing to the extreme and puts much of the work on the GM itself which can be quite the hassle, especially once you loop certain elements. In final overview, they all liked it, but no one would play it more than twice, as the game felt like a fun one-shot game, but nothing you would take out and for a spin any longer. Furthermore, the antagonistic GM mechanic, the vague Aether rules and the fact that its basically laser-focused at this specific concept of building it up, meant that it became a tad bit oppressive in forcing the way the story went. Edit: Free cog posted:[...] Mr.Misfit fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Oct 7, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2016 00:19
|
|
|
It's been a long week, but I have in my possession a list of survey responses for No Thyme This Time that I should be able to disclose by tomorrow evening, and make good on my deal to allow Black Wombat's game to be judged in the contest.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2016 04:37
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:FRACK! You know, I knew something felt off. The latter table was exactly the one that wasnīt supposed to be the one still in there, as the x5 table was replaced by the x4,5 table during early design tests but it seems I was so "laser-focused" that I forgot to replace it. Well, at least you can definitely be sure that moving to the former table was the right call. Have you considered having players draw a hand of Attributes+Skills? This would guarantee that characters who spread their skill points around have a better chance of Drawing a Hand. You might need to put a cap on Attributes during character generation and decrease the maximum Skill rating to about 4 or 5 if you do that, but I think that might be worth looking into. I'm glad you had fun! The antagonistic nature of the game is absolutely intended, since it's an experiment to see if someone could do a storytelling game with a strong "GM vs players" mindset. That's one reason why it's so hyper-focused and intended for a one-session or one story line long game, since I figured that the mindset would be easier for a group to indulge in when the game isn't expected to run for an extended period of time. The other reason is that I thought it'd make the game shorter to write, which was absolutely not the case. Either way, it's something I should be more clear about in a second draft of the game. I really appreciate your comments on the check marks and the Aether rules, since those were my most stressed-out about mechanics while writing the game. I'll get tweaking on the checkmarks, and Aether spending will definitely get fleshed out. Right now they're just the mechanical effects, when in the next draft I'd like them to just as tied into character and worldbuildling as the aspects of the player's sheets are. I'll definitely put in some pre-made Chambers or maybe just a list of pre-written Memories, Identities, and Threats for GM's to smash together in the next draft as well. Hopefully that'll ease GM burden. On another note, Secret Journey isn't going to be done by deadline time. I had really wanted to get it in to complete every bonus challenge in the contest, but good old Hurricane Matthew's made sure that it's not going to happen. Free Cog fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Oct 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 04:15
|
|
|
No Thyme This Time Playtest Playtime I prepped for 30 minutes, mostly memorizing the rules. We spent 30 minutes preparing the game, trying to choose a restaurant concept and design characters. We played for 2 hours. Regrettably, I only had two players with me this time. I think H would have gotten a kick out of this game. Summary Out restaurant was Prometheus' Pork Pit (Although I'm not sure they sold any actual pork?). The theme of the restaurant is that some of the employee's are gods who have been forgotten or forsaken their duties and they sell illegal sacred food that tended to be stolen from animal sacrifices. (I'm pretty sure that my players don't have any knowledge of the Exalted games, so this seemed to be a spontaneous choice on their part.) A played a Norse hunter god who procured the food. J played a Polynesian god of volcanoes, who was the chef. The restaurant ricocheted between different forgotten sacred spaces in aincent times, first in Rome, then in South America, and finally in China. Although at one point they debated traveling to enlightenment or 1900s Europe. In retrospect the intention may have been to play-through a single night at the restaurant, which certainly would have made it less confusing then trying to figure out how some of these problems were following them around. Some of the problems they dealt with were being chased by gods trying to track them down, out of control Volcanos which later became out of control Aztec armies empowered by lava, and accidentally letting some of their food get out into the wild before it was prepared so it became invasive species. I think I fell a little flat focusing on non-mechanical details for various reasons. It's one of my weaknesses as a GM. But the core loop is fairly clear and worked well enough to provide some detailed play. Mechanically I have a couple of quibbles. I really disliked the d4 increase/decrease of the intensity, I thought it really screwed with the pacing for a success to so often represent only a minor improvement, although if I had been more transformative in the problems perhaps this wouldn't have been a problem. The other issue was that the difficulty range is way too poorly defined. When I introduced a single problem with difficulty 14 early on it ended up being a thorn in the player's side for the entire game. I would propose limiting this to 12 at maximum? Also, after being introduced to the penalty for going multiple times in a row the players just immediately agreed to always take turns. Survey Results On a scale of 1 - 5, where 1 is completely disagree and 5 is completely agree, This game was well suited to our group. Me: 3, I think I did pretty poorly prodding for character and setting details from the players. I know at least one of my players that was unable to attend dislikes games where the players generate a lot of the content. But the player's that did attend seemed to enjoy it well enough. A: 3.5 J: 4 This game captured the feeling of the song (or at least the title) No Time This Time Me: 4, I think the play of the game accurately captured the feeling of hectically trying to solve all these problems at once. My players seemed more neutral about this being a match though. A: 3 J: 3 The game captured the feel of at least one of the following: Monte Cook Games, 90's story games, 'a revolutionary game' written by someone who has only played D&D. Me: 1, This game is more like a really rules light sort of modern indie game. A: 2 J: 3 (Wasn't Sure) I would like to play this game again. Me: 4, I'm drawn to trying this again, because I think I see some clear ways to improve my performance a second time through. A: 3 J: 4, Nice level of structure vs. imrpovisation. J said, "You know who would like this game? [Person] would." which is always a good sign. What was your favorite thing about this game? Me: There was a tight, obvious mechanical play loop. A: Flaws allow you an interesting risk/reward J: Clear play objectives with problem intensity and difficulty. What one change would you make to the game? Me: Define problem generation and pacing closer, I think. How many problems should be on the table at once normally, what difficulty/intensity spreads are good for them. Of course, that would take some playtesting. A: I would like a more clearly defined setting. Maybe include a bonus for succeeding when using a flaw too? J: Seems like the game would be more vibrant with more than two players? (I thought things got a bit repetitive with only two players myself, I ended up cutting the playtime a bit short when it seemed like we were running out of steam.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 05:12
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:Summary Yesss this is great. DalaranJ posted:The restaurant ricocheted between different forgotten sacred spaces in aincent times, first in Rome, then in South America, and finally in China. Although at one point they debated traveling to enlightenment or 1900s Europe. In retrospect the intention may have been to play-through a single night at the restaurant, which certainly would have made it less confusing then trying to figure out how some of these problems were following them around. It is, but like they say, if you had fun you're doing it right. DalaranJ posted:Mechanically I have a couple of quibbles. I really disliked the d4 increase/decrease of the intensity, I thought it really screwed with the pacing for a success to so often represent only a minor improvement, although if I had been more transformative in the problems perhaps this wouldn't have been a problem. Hmm, this makes sense. Perhaps the d4 could be increased to 2d4. But then something that was an 8, and a fairly major threat, could be eliminated with a single lucky roll? Then again, that's not really an issue. I can see that the CHANCE of that happening would be real fun for players. I'll make an adjustment. And with two players, I can see how turns would work best. Did they feel like the turns were nice, or too restrictive? I wanted encourage, you know, one person to not quarterback the Problems. DalaranJ posted:What one change would you make to the game? I like the idea of a bonus when you succeed using a flaw. And yeah, I certainly think there should be more info about Problem management for GMs. Thank you for doing this! Good information here. I'll probably run this for local people at some point, so a few tweaks are in order.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 20:51
|
|
|
Free Cog posted:Well, at least you can definitely be sure that moving to the former table was the right call. Have you considered having players draw a hand of Attributes+Skills? This would guarantee that characters who spread their skill points around have a better chance of Drawing a Hand. You might need to put a cap on Attributes during character generation and decrease the maximum Skill rating to about 4 or 5 if you do that, but I think that might be worth looking into. Possibly. Alternatively, clock squeezing out completely, as well as skills and instead resolve everything by attributes, with the following difference: Let everyone draw 5 cards always, but the attribute value restricts the width of hand they can use. Thus you force the play of hands and also retain the ability of players with better skill to use better hands while not going too far with a respect to numbers. Adding attributes and skills together for a draw was a system we tried with a very early version (Back in 2013, I think), and that led to people drawing through the decks and reshuffling constantly which on the other hand meant that you couldnīt play to the idea that you knew "which cards were left in the deck" as well. Also, drawing 10 cards seems increasingly homongous to me, but maybe thatīs just a big number aversion  Free Cog posted:I'm glad you had fun! The antagonistic nature of the game is absolutely intended, since it's an experiment to see if someone could do a storytelling game with a strong "GM vs players" mindset. That's one reason why it's so hyper-focused and intended for a one-session or one story line long game, since I figured that the mindset would be easier for a group to indulge in when the game isn't expected to run for an extended period of time. The other reason is that I thought it'd make the game shorter to write, which was absolutely not the case. Either way, it's something I should be more clear about in a second draft of the game. That be nice, seeing as my group even spoke to the idea of repeating the gig with a less vague wording on some of those rules. Free Cog posted:I really appreciate your comments on the check marks and the Aether rules, since those were my most stressed-out about mechanics while writing the game. I'll get tweaking on the checkmarks, and Aether spending will definitely get fleshed out. Right now they're just the mechanical effects, when in the next draft I'd like them to just as tied into character and worldbuildling as the aspects of the player's sheets are. I'll definitely put in some pre-made Chambers or maybe just a list of pre-written Memories, Identities, and Threats for GM's to smash together in the next draft as well. Hopefully that'll ease GM burden.[...] Useful, most definitely, but think about it like this. Maybe not allow the player to simply mash together every other memory or chamber identity they find and make them lose them faster, at 2 marks or something equally early, to increase the idea of costs and stress the danger they are being sent into. A number of pre-written chambers will also help immensely!
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 23:28
|
|
|
Apologies for the lovely doublepost... "Did...did something happen? Did I miss the contest ending? Is anyone out there? Hello? Guys? Come on, this isnīt funny and...why are the lights going out? HELLO?!"
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2016 11:59
|
|
|
Sorry for the delay -- I've had a ton of RL crap piling up. I plan to have results posted and prizes sent out this weekend!
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2016 12:20
|
|
|
We're two hours away from November, which means that, in the spirit of behind-schedule Kickstarters, it's time to actually end something that should have ended in September! I apologize for the extremely long delay on this; life has been a problem lately. But the show must go on. With no further ado, the winner of the Too Many Cooks Spoil the Police Contest is Free Cog with Too Much Information! This is an interesting, complex achievement, and I'm curious to give it a shot myself. The adversarial approach is challenging, but it's an interesting tack to take on this sort of game. In the second-place slot, a very close runner-up with some similar themes: Mr.Misfit's Truth Hits Everybody! This one felt slightly less fully-baked overall than TMI, but it's still a really remarkable achievement for a one-month dev process. Finally, the bonus awards: The Kickstarter Readiness Award goes to DalaranJ's When The World Is Falling Down, You Make the Best Of What's Still Around, because holy hell, is this a beautiful wad of feelies and absurdity. I would love to see this further fleshed out, but as stands, I had to give something just for the gorilla with the head of a bull and the brain of a different gorilla. The Triumph Over Adversity Award, both figuratively and literally, goes to Black Wombat's No Thyme This Time. with special commendation for DalaranJ for performing an extra playtest to keep this in the contest. This is a crazy little game, and I love it a lot. Free Cog, DalaranJ, and Black Wombat, please PM me or email amanda dot vanrhyn at g dot austincc dot edu with information to award your prizes. First prize is $30 DTRPG credit, while the bonus awards can be either $10 of DTRPG credit or $10 worth of forums upgrades, as you see fit. (Free Cog, I guess if you want $30 of forums stuff, that's fine too? I didn't really think about that.) Mr.Misfit, please contact Dagon about your prize, since they generously donated it. Thank you so much to everyone who entered this contest! All the entries were a joy, and it was hard to choose between the final entries. I hope y'all had fun.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 04:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 09:18 |
|
|
I've never really gone from zero to game in the span of a month before, so this was quite the experience. Thank you very much for running the contest, it was a lot of fun!
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 01:05
|
|