GenCon 2008 Wrap-Up

A couple things, and then I'll stop posting about GenCon and start posting about current projects and concerns.

1) FINAL NUMBERS: Thou Art But A Warrior sold 24 solo copies and 7 copies as part of the package with Polaris for an astounding THIRTY ONE copies. I had suspicions that I could sell that many, but the fact that I actually accomplished it despite overall booth numbers being low makes me really, really happy.

2) OTHER COOL THINGS. There are a couple things that deserve mention here, but since I've already discussed them elsewhere I'll just post links to the relevant threads.

Danielle's amazing game of Kagematsu was fantastic, and is one of the things that I'm excited to see next year. Ron started a thread in the Playtesting forum on the Forge, which you can find over here.

Tony LB is posting actual plays of all seven (SEVEN!) of the games of Misery Bubblegum that he ran at GenCon. I'm even more excited about Misery Bubblegum than I am about Kagematsu. Hopefully some time within the next little while, he'll have gotten to posting AP of the game that I played in. That thread is also in the Playtesting forum, and can be found here.

A lot of people talked about their GenCon experience in this thread over on Story Games.

Steve Segedy started a GenCon post-mortem discussion in the Conventions forum on the Forge, and there's been some good conversation already.

3) FUTURE PROJECTS. One of the reasons I went to GenCon, besides engaging in dirty dirty capitalism and hanging out with new friends, is to do some networking and get my name out there for future projects. This aspect of GenCon was much more successful than last year, as I have a few definite things lined up. As of yet, it's too early to talk about any of them. But I'm confident that I'll be able to talk about them more in the future.

The art in Thou Art But A Warrior was really well received, and I have hopes that it will generate interest in future illustration work.

4) BLACK OPS ANGEL GAME. I saw a lot of neat games that handled character creation in rather unorthodox ways, which helped to shake loose a lot of ideas for how to deal with this problem in the game that I'm working on now. I have every hope that by the end of the year I'll have an alpha version of the game finished and ready to start mutilating playtesting.

I've thought a lot about how I want to plan things, and I decided that taking two years to develop Thou Art But A Warrior was a sensible move on my part, considering that I have so many other projects on the go. I might shoot for having an ashcan available for next GenCon, but for now I'll just concentrate on trying to finish an alpha version of the game.

The angel game - some basic notes about structure

The angel game (titles are a weakness of mine) has been coming along nicely. I’ve got the basic structure of the game figured out, even if hammering down the specifics is giving me a bit of trouble. I’m designing it to be a pretty short-form game that can be played episodically or as a one-shot – very much like Inspectres. What’s more, it’s going to be a very competitive game, with players on two teams trying to accomplish opposing goals.

There are going to be two modes of play with different lengths. Skirmish mode will be a super-short, party game type length – say forty-five minutes to an hour long where teams play through only one mission. There will be a longer mode that will consist of three connected missions with an overall goal, the goal for play length being a couple hours.

As far as the structure of play goes, the game will be pretty rigidly structured into distinct phases of play.

The first phase will be Mission Generation and Briefing. Teams will generate a mission by rolling on a table once each for Person, Action, and Location. So sample missions that might be generated could be Assassinate the UN Secretary General in the Hague, or Brainwash a Popular Cult Leader in the Pentagon.

The second phase will be Mission Prep. During Mission Prep, players from each team will take turns trying to accumulate advantages to apply to the inevitable conflict. (This phase is, as yet, the least well-defined)

The third phase is when the two teams actually go head-to-head. Play in this phase is team-versus-team play in which each team races to acquire three successes and complete the mission. This section is looking to be pretty crunchy and tactically complex, but the goal is for it to be crunchy in a Gamist fun kind of way. The tactics map that I posted in my previous post is actually going to be used in this section of the game.

I’ve already gotten some positive responses from a thread on Story-Games, so I’m feeling very encouraged and am happily plugging away at the first rough document.

The new game

I decided that my notes were reasonably complete enough to make a stab at typing up a draft version of the black ops angel game that I'm working on right now. There's still several things that I don't know how they're going to work, but I feel like I have a reasonably complete idea of what the overall structure of the game should look like and what my objectives are for the type of play I want to achieve is.

Whether or not I can come close to achieving that is anyone's guess. But I sure plan on giving it a go!

As might be implied by the subject matter, and from previous posts, this will be an incredibly tongue-in-cheek endeavor - which will be a bit of a relief after the unrelenting seriousness of Thou Art But A Warrior. Here are some amusing excerpts from what I have of the document so far.

"Opposing team, your job is much easier. You know that God wants to kills bunches and bunches of infidels. So obviously you want to Protect the Popular Cult Leader from being Framed in the Hague, Assassinate the Weapons Researcher in China, and Brainwash/Covert the Popular Cult Leader at the Pentagon.

Easy? No? Well, nothing worth doing ever is."

I plan on opening the book with an intro comic to set the tone of the game and explain the ideas behind the setting. I was writing up my thoughts on how it should go, and this little bit amused me...

REPORTER: What about the fact that Satan and those traditionally affiliated with him deny responsibility for the outbreaks that have killed millions. A spokesman for the terrorist group HALO blamed the attacks on God.

PRESS SECRETARY JESUS CHRIST: Well, Satan is a liar. Next question.

Lastly, here's something I'm working on for the phase of the game when the two sides battle head to head. I'm not going to bother trying to explain the rules, because I haven't got them all figured out yet. Never the less, I think it looks pretty nifty.

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

Anyhow, I had a lot more planned out than I realized because when I sat down to translate my 5 or so tiny pages of handwritten notes into english, I wound up with 5+ typed pages of notes in Word, and I haven't even touched half of what I've done so far. Which is heartening, because I've gotten more done than I thought I had.

My goal is to have a mega-ultra-super rough draft that I can test bits of the system for by October - as that will be when we're having the next gaming mini-con/reunion for the old Ohio group. What with GenCon and the house, though, I don't know that that's terribly realistic. But I'll keep that goal in mind all the same.

Spending time with The Other Game

Continuing the theme of procrastination...

So over here on Story Games, I talk about this game that I now have to write about black ops angels (warning: there are Serenity spoilers in that thread, if you're one of the three Firefly fans who hasn't seen it).

In actuality, it's been writing itself and I seem to just be along for the ride. It's been making a welcome break from the tedium of layout. And since I'm waiting for a book on typography to come from Amazon, I seem to have some time to kill.

Last night I sat down to muse on what Press Secretary Jesus might look like, and what might a black ops angel look like. I came up with the following drawing.

It has since then occurred to me that if Jesus is Press Secretary, then what the hell does that make the Metatron? Is the Metatron the Secretary of Foreign Affairs? Or the Chief of Staff? Or maybe even the head of the black ops division? So many choices!

(And yes, I quite cheerfully realize that I am going to hell.)