Tag: writing

Game Design Insight on Twitter!

I’ve been participating in a meme on Twitter about game design insight!

Check it out here!

Also check out Ewen Cluney’s thread with links to other designer’s Twitter threads!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Creators in Need

To be added to next month’s list please respond to this survey by March 5, 2017, midnight, EST.

I recently posted on Google+ asking that game-related creators in hardship respond to my post with their various product sales pages or portfolios. I got quite a few responses, which is both great (lots of people to share about!) and bad (lots of hardship!).

I didn’t ask people why they needed help, but did say if they wanted to include information they could provide it. Please don’t judge people for not providing reasoning, or assume there is none. Some of us keep our hurts private. There is no particular order except those who responded first.

If you like the work of any of the people who I’ve shared information about below, and you have some money to spare, please take some time to support them! 

I will note: this is extremely guy heavy. If you are frustrated I did not include enough women and NB people in hardship, please keep in mind that I am not scouring the internet for these things. I need people to self identify their work and their needs for everything I do on this blog. I try to keep an eye out, but there is only so much I can do. I may be doing this on a more regular basis, so please look out for the next post. Also feel free to reshare this with your own links!

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Josh T. Jordan – Ginger Goat Games, Freelance
Josh is trying to pay off medical bills for family (wife and kids).
DriveThru RPG
LinkedIn

Tod Foley – Project Ubi
Tod Foley wants to hire artists for UbiquiCity.
Patreon

Craig Judd – Editor, Layout Artist, Graphic Designer, Manga Artist
Craig is working to meet needs and pay bills.
Portfolio Site

Brandon Williams – Arcanum Syndicate (Creator of Demon Gate)
Brandon is looking for collaboration as well as to bring in more talent for projects.
Arcanum Syndicate site


Michael McKensie – Graphic Artist
Michael is looking to move to games and graphic arts full time.
Portfolio Site

Lissi Leuterio – Animator, Storyboard Artist, and Illustrator (primarily 2D FX + boards)
Lissi is currently job hunting, and doing sporadic commissions work.
Tumblr
Patreon
Vimeo

Tom McGrenery – Writer and Editor
Tom notes “bills to pay and mouths to feed.” 
Portfolio Site

Max “Drunken Dwarf” Havic – Writer, Designer (Galaxy Incorporated)
Max has an upcoming Kickstarter.
DriveThru RPG

Chris Kentlea – RPG-Related Designer
Chris notes “always in need of a little help.”
Facebook

David Schirduan – Game Designer 
David is looking to catch up on medical bills.
Schirduans Site
If you enjoy David’s free work, please send a thank you or PayPal what you’d like to davidschirduan@gmail.com.

Mad Martian One – Game Design (Ice Kingdoms)
Mad Martian are releasing content for Ice Kingdoms and looking to raise awareness. 
LuLu
CreateSpace
DriveThru RPG
Facebook

Ashton McAllan – Game Designer (The Republic)
Ashton’s using games as supplemental income and to support an out of work partner.
The Republic Site
DMs Guild

Moses Wildermuth – Editor, Creator (Gold & Glory, Ice Kingdoms, Mutazoids)
Moses has experienced a reduction in the income that allowed design work on the side.
Patreon


David Berg – Game Designer (Within My Clutches)
David is looking for financial support during some life stresses.
Shrike Design

Gennifer Bone – Artist
Gennifer is moving and aiming to reduce debts. 
Patreon
Blog

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Thank you to everyone who has read, and to those who shared their needs! Speaking up is a hard thing to do, but a good one. I hope you all have the opportunity to check out the sites and projects above, and enjoy what you find – and support the creators while you do!

Please share this widely! 

This post is unpaid but Thoughty supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions with Darren Watts on Golden Age Champions

Today’s interview is with Darren Watts for his project Golden Age Champions, a setting book for the Champions superheroic game using the generic Hero system. It’s currently on Kickstarter, waiting for you to check it out! Let’s see what Darren had to say about his project.

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Tell me a little about Golden Age Champions. What excites you about it?

Golden Age Champions is a setting book for Champions, the superhero game using the generic Hero System that’s been around in various editions since 1981. Specifically, it describes the Champions Universe (the modern version of which I co-wrote with Steve Long back in 2002) of 1938 to 1950, but more importantly it teaches GMs and players about the genre of Golden Age superheroing. We go into extensive discussion of the tropes, the styles of play, and the kinds of stories you can use these building blocks to tell at your table.
The Golden Age is at the same time similar and alien to fans of modern superheroing. Many of your favorite characters were created then: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America. But the Golden versions of those characters aren’t exactly quite the same as the ones you know. Many of the assumptions we make about how superheroes “work” were set back then, but again there are plenty of concepts that will be brand new to today’s gamers and fans. There are hundreds of superheroes in the period you’ve never heard of, and some of them are downright boggling.
The book is also a lot about how to run historical long-term campaigns. I’ve run several for years at a time, starting well before the war and carrying all the way through and past it. How do superhumans go to war? How do simple characters grow and change over time? How do we play with these amazing, imagination-charged concepts that don’t quite fit modern sensibilities? Indeed, how do we address the differences between then and today; both the social ones (the unfortunately-all-too-common racism and sexism, the ever-present shadow of the war) and the more technical ones (why do these characters keep splitting up?) that make for rough gaming at today’s table?
For some background, can you tell me about the game system Golden Age Champions is a supplement for?
Champions runs on the Hero System, a generic point-buy system that first debuted in 1981 and originally created by Steve Peterson and George McDonald. It’s famously crunchy, but most of the crunch is in character creation. It’s designed with a great many “adjustable settings” so that it can simulate a wide range of genres and play styles. Most Hero books focus on a specific setting or genre, so it scores very high on the “simulationist” axis. There have been six editions over the years, and I was president of the company for the last two of them. 
The Champions Universe is the long-running fictional superhero setting for Champions. It’s also the basis for the MMO Champions Online, who are the actual IP holders and our business partners. I’ve kind of been the keeper of continuity since I wrote most the 5th Ed Champions Universe back in 2002.
Tell me some exciting things about running long-term campaigns! What kind of information do you have in the book for GMs to make them happen?
Well, the first thing you have to do is get great players! Or teach them to be great, I suppose, but I’ve been very lucky over the years. Then, you have to get them invested in the setting, which needs to be both deep enough to hold their interest and yet open enough that they have room to contribute and take some ownership. In this case I follow Ken Hite’s truism, “nothing is as interesting as the real world.” World War II is such a fascinating period, and I try very hard to bring it alive for the players. In my campaigns we have a very strong sense of time and place, moving month by month through the war and letting the great narrative of the actual history inform everything we do.
With superheroes in particular, you have to be careful. Players coming to a GA setting are presumably at least somewhat interested in the war itself from a historical basis, which means among other things they want the setting to remain based in the historical reality. They want to see Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Berlin, etc. and participate in it all on some level. But with characters who are too powerful, there’s also a strong pull to the question of “why didn’t Superman and Green Lantern and the Spectre, etc., all just fly to Tokyo on December 8th and stomp it flat, and while they’re at it take out Berlin on the 9th?” The tension created by those answers is interesting and fertile, I think.
How did you approach the sometimes-tough topics of racism and sexism in the era? Did you address any other issues like homophobia?
Well, I stay aware that I’m telling superhero stories, and so most of my characters are broad and the heroes in particular are idealized. But on the other hand I don’t want to ignore the range of people’s experiences or to whitewash history. My game includes female characters who show considerably more agency and breadth than most period comics (Wonder Woman as a notable exception!), and I have heroes who are POCs which were vanishingly rare in the period. As idealized heroes, we kind of default to an ahistorical sense of social justice because that’s just nicer to play. However, we do talk about the sexism and particularly the racism that motivated a lot of the horror on all sides of the war (and the US was a terrible offender itself- one of the sample heroes is a nisei from California who is fighting for a country who is currently imprisoning his family.) As superhero stories do, we can also talk in grand allegory- the Atlanteans are terribly prejudiced against airbreathers, and “lander” is one of the nastiest words in their vocabularies. I haven’t specifically talked much about homophobia in the book, but one character is clearly gay and again, in this idealized setting, his teammates know and help him keep it from becoming public.
[Blogger note: POC stands for people of color, just in case you didn’t know!]
Can you offer some of the concepts you think will be new to gamers and fans today, to help players and GMs understand what they might be getting into?
I’m not sure there’s anything “brand new” in either the rules or setting- I’m trying to reintroduce a quite old thing, actually, as far as the genre goes. If you’ve never been exposed to the sheer joy in goofy creativity of the period comics, then I hope to show you what’s lovable about it. Comics at the time were initially intended for small children, and it took publishers a few years to realize the size of their adult audience- Captain Marvel was the best selling periodical at military PX’s, beating out magazines like Time and Life! 
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Golden Age Champions sounds pretty cool! There’s a lot to think about in the world of superheroes, and it looks like Darren has done a fair amount of that. Check out the game on Kickstarter, and share this interview to spread the word if you like it!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Reflections

Over the past 22 days I played a card game on my thatlittleitch blog called The Beast (link) by Aleksandra Sontowska and Kamil Węgrzynowicz of naked female giant. I had played a version in beta that had been pretty interesting and fascinating, but I had trouble keeping up with it. I also had trouble keeping up with it this time, but was able to make up for it, which made all the difference.

My experience with The Beast begins here. (link)

Today, I finished the game. I am – for I think the first time – struggling with ending a game. I have always been sad to end games because of the people, but I don’t think it’s ever a game that has made me feel afraid and anxious to be done.  I’ve been thinking about it and there are a few key reasons:

1) This game has the ability to dig into you emotionally and mentally in a way most people might be unfamiliar. If you let it, it keys into dark desires and horrors, and if you take the time to write those out in an exploratory fashion, it can open up a lot of thoughts you might otherwise hide.

2) I played in public. This is not recommended by the book, but I chose to do it as a way to demonstrate what such a game can be, and to show the kind of experience someone could have, even for people who would never play it. It also made it hard to decide how much I would share.

3) Some of these questions get incredibly personal, and I’ll tell you now that I was 100% honest, and pulled all of those responses from somewhere inside me. There is something to be said to being honest with everyone including yourself, especially about things that might be scary or taboo or gross.

4) This game opened me up to a lot of opportunities to express things I haven’t. Talking about pains I’ve hidden or sexual desires I don’t talk about – you don’t just decide randomly to say that stuff. This gives a special place to do it, where you tell the stories, you control the events that happen – and the consequences.

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Questions I received while working on this:

1) Is their replayability?

Yes! You’d have to be creative and I’d take a break inbetween but yes, I totally think The Beast is replayable.

2)  What about triggering content?

Most of what actually goes into the content is up to you. There are prompts on the cards, but there is no forcing you into using specific behaviors. I admittedly triggered myself twice, but it was a choice I made to go through something really hard and the reality that it was in my control made a difference. 

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With all of that in mind, I have to say I honestly wouldn’t change a thing about The Beast. There’s so much there to explore and so many things to do. In all, I feel like there is a rock in my throat as I write this. I feel terrified but yet so grateful. I look forward to free days with no digging into my soul but yet I will miss them, I will miss the excuse to be bare and open, I will miss something deep to pour them into.

I feel like I’m breaking up with a toxic lover who I had the deepest of intimacies with, and who satisfied me in ways I didn’t think could be done, but hurt me in the same. It has surely be an experience.

I do think I may be giving away my copy of The Beast not because I wouldn’t play it again, but because I want someone else to get to play it, and carry forward something that treated me so well.

Best to you all!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Closure

I’m playing The Beast on thatlittleitch! Closure.

(Debrief post soon to come.)

These posts linking to thatlittleitch are not sponsored posts. 

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Day 20

I’m playing The Beast on thatlittleitch! Day 20 is now posted!

These posts linking to thatlittleitch are not sponsored posts. 

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Day 19

I’m playing The Beast on thatlittleitch! Day 19 is now posted!

These posts linking to thatlittleitch are not sponsored posts. 

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Day 18

I’m playing The Beast on thatlittleitch! Day 18 is now posted!

These posts linking to thatlittleitch are not sponsored posts. 

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Day 17

I’m playing The Beast on thatlittleitch! Day 17 is now posted!

(content warning: gender-related body issues (dysphoria?) within. gross related to menstruation.)

These posts linking to thatlittleitch are not sponsored posts. 

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

The Beast, Day 16

I’m playing The Beast on thatlittleitch! Day 16 is now posted!

These posts linking to thatlittleitch are not sponsored posts. 

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.