attacks of opportunity

Here's something we haven't done in years: design a game based on this picture, found on the Paleo-Future blog in the post "Computer Criminals of the Future (1981)". 

Posted by Phil at 1:56 AM | Permalink | Comments

Sexy Deadly is a game that Johnstone Metzger, Lance Allen, Joe MacDonald, and I created for Jared Sorensen's Indie Game Design Challenge. It's available for $1.00.

Now we've got a free supplement:

The supplement, Seducing New Targets, includes:

• A full demo with pregen characters and objective for Sexy Deadly


• Vengeance is my Name, a deathmatch supplement for Sexy Deadly


• Commando Squad, a WWII commando hack for Sexy Deadly


• Sexy Jared, a complete (satirical) RPG by Johnstone Metzger


• Deadly Sex, a complete (and also satirical) RPG by Luke Crane

Check it out!

Labels: sexy deadly

Posted by Tony at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments

Coming soon, from Joe MacDonald, Lance Allen, Johnstone Metzger, and Tony Dowler.

Posted by Tony at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

Marketing is most often defined as creating demand for your product. To a lot of people that means artificially drumming up demand for your product through hype, buzz, advertising, or some other means.

But the simplest form of marketing is often to tell the right people that your product exists. I've found Boardgamegeek.com to be an invaluable resource for doing that, which is why I think every game designer who has an interest in marketing their game should check it out.

After getting back from Gen Con with How to Host a Dungeon, I got it listed on Board Game Geek.

I had a couple of reasons for this. One, I wanted to see if there was a market for HTHTAD among board gamers. Two, I wanted to see what would happen. In September, the month I was listed on BGG, it produced 538 hits on my Web site out of 1294 total, or 41% of my traffic.

I have no way of knowing how many of those people bought How to Host a Dungeon, but I sold 42 copies in that period, so the math suggests I sold 17 copies thanks to my Board Game Geek listing, WHICH IS PRETTY FREAKING AWESOME BUMP, in my humble opinion.

After September, the numbers drop. BGG gave me 65 hits out of 695 total, which is 15% of my traffic (and by the same math, 3 copies sold). Looking at my BGG page, I see that 11 people list themselves as owning How to Host a Dungeon. The real number is probably higher, possibly MUCH higher.

My person hunch is that possibly 1/3 of my post-Gen Con sales came from people who discovered the game through BGG, which strongly validates point 1: there is an audience for my game on BGG.

I hope that's helpful to someone who's marketing an indie board game. I'm going to post a bit more on this and talk about what I learned about BGG, and the mistakes I made using it to promote my game.

We're having a useful discussion on this over at Story Games right now as well.

Labels: board game, boardgamegeek, How to host a dungeon, marketing

Posted by Tony at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments

In the diadem of Tutankhamen there is a prehistoric gem whose origin has mystified scientists since it was discovered. Analysis of the ultra-rare stone, which must have had incredible value when it was set, shows that it is, astonishingly, more than 90% pure silica glass, and with an age that pre-dates any known glass-producing civilization.

The true story, ferreted out by scientists in 2006, is that the stone is a fragment of meteoric glass from a region of the Sahara peppered with such artifacts. The scientists theorize that the glass was formed by a gigantic fireball, probably caused by a cometary fragment exploding in the atmosphere.

But in your game, the fragment is evidence of a prehistoric civilization, perhaps a fragment of the glass cities of the Atlanteans, destroyed in the cataclysm.

Or maybe desert vitrification is evidence of an ancient high technology war fought on this planet in ancient times.


Or perhaps, the comet was a sentient alien sentient that was hurled to earth as punishment for celestial crimes, and which even now seeks to reunite its scattered parts and accumulate enough power to ascend--a pulp classic tale that must climax with a dangerous PC-led expedition into the deepest Saharah.

Or, in your non-terrestrial fantasy campaign, desert dwelling tribes carefully guard the source of their most valuable trade good, a strange stone which can be crafted into sharpened tools and which possesses magical properties.

Labels: idea mine, pulp

Posted by Tony at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: cartoon

Posted by Tony at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments

Secret project:



Playstorming got me this far, but what now?

I think I'm playtested into a corner.

Labels: playtest, scifi

Posted by Tony at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

That Republican isn't very happy that I took her Cuban base to form a new congressional district.



I don't know anything about political redistricting, but I know what I like.

Games written with a didactic purpose typically suck, but The Redistricting Game is loads of fun. You play a political consultant assigned with redrawing the political districts so one party (or both, see below) can screw the system.

The Redistricting Game makes good use of the gamer learning curve. To beat each level, you have to learn the system better. The better you learn the system, the more you know about the issue. Perhaps teaching a new generation of gamers how to gerrymander effectively isn't the best way to champion election reform, but the game does make its point. On the last level you have to redistrict without any polling data at all.

Stuff I learned from this game:

• Redistricting is fun, but scary


• Bipartisan redistricting is really creepy


• No matter how you redistrict, Vox Populi is never satisfied


• Unless you put her in charge of the non-partisan redistricting commission


• Proportional representation is a highly malleable concept

This is Vox Populi. Every time we redistrict she writes a mean newspaper article about how unfair we are.

Posted by Tony at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments

When I was in junior high school and we made games, our trick was to make character classes of whatever we thought were the important types of people in our world. When we made our Teenage Role Playing Game (TARP), the classes reflected high school stereotype of rocker, skater, jock, and nerd. When we made a science fiction game it was scientist, soldier, pilot, and space knight.

In Principia, the game I’m working on now, the character classes embody cultural ideals linked to art, science, warfare, and religion. But how do you represent a big idea like Christianity or Reason as a character class without trivializing it?

I’m working on an idea right now that I’m having a lot of fun with. Each position (that’s analogous to a class in Principia) has a matrix that links a representative situation with a narration and a consequence. Take a cultural group with a strong cultural ideal, create a matrix, and I hope you get a potentially explosive terrain for role-play. Here’s what this might look like for the first Christians:

In this situation:	My character can:	And the GM decides:
I act selflessly	Work miracles	Who is incited to jealousy, anger, or hatred against me
Invoke Jesus’ name	Heal the sick and infirm	What they expect from me
Suffer blame, calumny, or violence for Jesus’ sake	Convert someone	What their friends, family, or compatriots think of that

When I play a character in that early Church, the rules tell me exactly how I can influence the world when I act selfless, invoke Jesus’ name, or suffer for his sake. The consequences of influencing the world are new challenging situations for my character. I make enemies, create expectations, and people start talking about what has been done.

But Principia is not about the Early Church, it’s about the Renaissance. Here’s what
Alchemy looks like in the current draft of Principia:

In this situation:	My character can:	And the GM decides:
I work in my lab	I can produce drugs, explosive, or other reagents	Declare a side effect of those items
Use alchemical reagents	Blow things up	Decide the collateral damage
Forge a relationship with a character	Discover their motivations	What form the relationship takes
Interact with someone whose motivations I understand	Urge them to an appropriate course of action	How it changes the relationship

Alchemists are mercurial characters. They’re always changing the world around them and suffering the consequences. Also, they can blow things up, and they never have to roll the dice for it. A nice fringe benefit that.

Posted by Tony at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments

I just published a book of dungeon maps, For the Love of Dungeons. Go ahead and check it out!

Labels: dungeon crawl, hand drawn maps, maps

Posted by Tony at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments

How to Host a Dungeon is back from the printers and in the assembly plant!



Some of the graphics didn't come out in the print run as nicely as I'd like, so purchasers be warned! I will, however, replace your copy from the second printing if you're dissatisfied.

Update: And here's how to find it! Come to the Forge Booth at Gen Con. I'll be there much of the day giving demos of the game as well.

Labels: How to host a dungeon

Posted by Tony at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

Principia is a good system for games where the characters are embedded in a social order under stress. I've been playtesting Principia in it's default setting a lot. I was thinking about alternate settings for a game at Go Play NW, and Star Wars just kind of jumped out at me.

When you set out to run Principia, your first job is to find a pressure point on the current world order and push. Make sure the pressure point encompasses something the characters care about. Finally, pose a question that ties them together.

So I'm thinking about Star Wars Episode 2. The Jedi Order, the Senate, and the Republic are all under stress. Let's take the Jedi Order. That's our pressure point. We'll decide it's fate through play. We'll assume the characters care about the fate of the Jedi Order. This is Star Wars after all.

Now we need a question. This is the question we're going to answer at the end of play. "Does the Jedi Order deserve to survive?" is a good one. How about "Is the Jedi Order hypocritical?", or "Can balance be restored to the Force (without destroying the Jedi order)?"

So for characters we can have a group of Jedi, or a mixed group of heroes, or even Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine. That sounds pretty cool--a game where we can play some of the principal characters on both sides of Episode 2 and decide the ultimate fate of the Jedi order.

Labels: go play nw, Principia

Posted by Tony at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments