For those of you that attended last night’s panel, I will be writing up the outline for our space vampire game very soon (maybe later today, depending on a handful of factors.)
Here’s the situation: You want to write a bit for it? Toss me an email at davidahilljr@machineageproductions.com. I’ll give you a short assignment, I’ll give you edits, and I’ll put it in the final draft. Important: If you’re looking to write for the project, you need to email me by November 15th. Deadlines are important to publishing work, this is no exception. Also, talk to me about names. But either way, if you want your name in the piece as a contributor, even if you’re not interested in contributing some fiction, let me know since I didn’t have an attendance list.
Also, if you do art and are willing to contribute a piece, toss me a line. If you’d like, I can give you an assignment. I’d particularly like it if you sent me a link to your online portfolio, or a few samples. That way I can cater the assignment to your particular strengths.
Once the final product is done, I’ll put it up for free download under a Creative Commons, Share-Alike Noncommercial license. Basically, that means people can download it all they want, but they cannot sell it. It’s free, built by the RPG community, for the RPG community.
October 26th, 2009 - 10:31 am
Space vampires? Space vampirates! That could be one of the coolest games in a while.
October 26th, 2009 - 11:56 am
Oh, you’ll love it. It’s a really interesting concept. Every time I run this panel, we come up with awesome ideas.
October 26th, 2009 - 4:53 pm
That is the problem with me being in Canadia. Not many cons close by that I can hop to without crossing a boarder.
October 26th, 2009 - 4:56 pm
Oh yeah. I can only imagine. Of course, there’s a LOT of local conventions, it turns out. I didn’t know. So maybe there are some smaller ones, you’re just not aware of them.
October 26th, 2009 - 6:06 pm
Probably. I go to the big ones in Toronto, and I am aware of a few mini-cons. It is not of work to get around to find all of them.
October 26th, 2009 - 6:08 pm
Oh trust me, I understand.
And imagine, in order to be successful, I HAVE to find them.
October 26th, 2009 - 6:09 pm
I thought you didn’t get out my ways?
October 26th, 2009 - 6:10 pm
Oh, not in Canada. But we have silly obscure conventions here.
Recently, I did a convention that had 25 attendants. (To be honest though, I made a HUGE potential business contact, so it was super worth it.)
October 26th, 2009 - 6:37 pm
25? That is better than some of the minicons I’ve been at here.
October 26th, 2009 - 6:38 pm
Yeah. I like small cons. I like intimacy.
But I also like the opportunity to turn a profit
I’m trying to get into PAX Boston. That’d be killer.
October 26th, 2009 - 6:51 pm
PAX kicks serious ass. Now that they have that ‘We game at Penny Arcade’ thing.
October 26th, 2009 - 6:57 pm
Exactly my thoughts. I can probably turn over a lot of new players to the hobby.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:08 pm
Especially the obscure indie games.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:10 pm
Which is mostly the goal.
We sold out of our first print run of the Maschine Zeit introductory adventure this weekend. That tells me some very good things.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:23 pm
Yup, good things come. I grabbed a pdf. It is very nice.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:24 pm
Thank you!
Let me know how it turns out if you get the chance to run it.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:30 pm
I’m running Dogs and Dead Running now, but I’ll see if I can run it soon. The groups I’m in have a democracy, sadly.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:31 pm
Silly democracies.
I understand. No big rush or anything.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:36 pm
I did get Terminus Est in, I still have some work to do before I can finish writing the playtest. The next one is a seriously long fight that ends the session.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:40 pm
OOOOOOoo.
How do fights go? Are they smooth? Are they fairly quick? Do they seem challenging?
October 26th, 2009 - 7:42 pm
Large fights are really long, just because of ties and rerolls and the number of points everyone has. It moves smoothly, except their are some powers are irrelevant. If multiple chevaliers are against a single nightmare, it is not challenging at all if it is not super powerful.
I did write the review…
October 26th, 2009 - 7:44 pm
True. I read the review.
I figured the fights might go on for a while, at least in the case of big ones. But at least the narrative style seems to help dictate how the struggle goes.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:54 pm
The short fights with only a few groups/participants are relatively short. The narrative style is very helpful for narrating as the GM, and keeps everyone on the same page with how things are going since there are no hassles with ’squares’ and all the movement is abstract.
October 26th, 2009 - 7:57 pm
Cool. I think I might end up doing a set of miniatures rules for the game as a supplement. I’m not sure yet.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:06 pm
I dunno, it might ruin what you have.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:07 pm
Hence supplement. I totally agree. But it might be a fun little modular addition to the game. Not a core rule by any stretch.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:15 pm
I guess so. I never liked ‘you move this far’. I understand why it exists, and why it is needed, I just don’t like it.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:19 pm
You know, I’m not a big fan of it, either. But I think it’d be fun to toy around with it. It’s one side of RPG development I’ve never touched. It’d at least be interesting experience.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:25 pm
I dabbled in it a while back. It gets really complicated when you are using cars, planes, and such.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:26 pm
My challenge would really be to make it a fun, narrative system. So it’d be similar in vein, not super tactical with stringent guidelines.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:41 pm
Call it Narrative Control. The stringent guidelines would have to make sure that no one goes ‘over the top’ or shying away from taking the narrative by the horns.
P.S. I think we broke the longest running comment record.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:43 pm
Oh, you know, you’re right. I think we did. But that’s cool. It’ll help me learn the way Google Adsense trends work.
Yeah, I think it’ll be something like that. Lenient, more in the players’ hands than not.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:44 pm
It could be GMless. That would make for a fun game if everyone just trades narrative control.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:44 pm
Maschine Zeit is going to be written with GM as a wholly optional thing.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:47 pm
I didn’t notice that when I skimmed the PDF.
4e has an optional DM choice, which I thought was kinda neat. We played and called the game Munchkin 4e. Players rolled, whoever rolled highest got to choose what monster they were controlling. It was a riot, especially when we went to town and we pretty much made up what we were doing, the quest, where to go, and what we were fighting. I have truly never had more fun in a D&D game.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:50 pm
It’s not in that PDF. The final, full game will have a lot more game theory stuff, including all sorts of fun advice for running GM-less.
Oh that’s really cool. I like the idea of that. I could certainly see the fun in it. I really like 4e’s ambition and experimentation, it’s a huge step from 3e.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:53 pm
The plot had loads of twists. We slowly made it into a groove where each player had a few sentences. 4e does a lot of new things with the d20 system, however a lot of its roots where in the end line of 3.5.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:53 pm
True. Although, I read the new DMG2, it’s wonderful. Interesting, engaging stuff. Like nothing I’ve ever seen in a D&D book.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:56 pm
I’ll have to give it a look. Pleasure commenting with you. I’ve got some sleeping to do. Cheers.
October 26th, 2009 - 8:57 pm
Of course. Enjoy your night.
Definitely check it out. Robin Laws’s section on Skill Challenges alone is worth the price of admission.