Burning Wheel Witcher 3 Setting Hack!
The first thing I'll address is what's garnered the most interest up to this point, which is the Witcher 3 setting hack that I talked about a bit in one of my last posts. Unfortunately, in perusing the Codex a bit more, it turns out that the rules for creating your own monsters, traits, and lifepaths were not carried over from the previous editions of the The Monster Burner. For this I say boo, as this was one of the biggest things I was looking forward to when the Codex was announced, and for it to not be included is kind of super disappointing.
However, what I DID find after some online snooping was the worksheets for trait burning and monster burning. The two biggest hurdles for the Witcher setting are determining the correct traits for the witcher transformation process, and the skills and traits for the various folklore monsters. Using these worksheets, I've started trying to piece together some of these details, which I hope to have to share within the next week or so.
My Game!
Some of the distraction from my witcher project has been due to the progression of the game that I've been working on designing. It's my first real attempt at designing my own system, and I've been shocked at how it's been going on. Originally, the game was inspired by non-fantastic games centered around ordinary folk, pushed forth by my desire to create a game about kid-to-teenager life and the perils therein. Seeing games in this vein being worked on like Damn the Man, Save the Music and Sarah Richardson/Magpie Games' Velvet Glove hasn't cooled that thought at all. As such, I took a lot of inspiration from Paul Czege's wonderful Nicotine Girls game, which provided some of the framework for the character generation and some terms.
However, as I've been moving forward, the game has moved from being a hack to it's own system, which has been very exciting. I've reached the point where I'm just about ready to start playtesting, which is both thrilling and terrifying. But hopefully I'll have some tests soon, and then I may reach out to some of my far-off internet gaming friends to try and run some playtests for me.
Games I Wanna Play!
As is always the case with gamers, I have more games than I have time or people to play with. Out of these games, though, there is one I've been reading and thinking a lot about lately, which is Hannah Shaffer's Questlandia. I first heard about this game at PAX East this past year and saw Hannah's display as part of the lumpley/Make Big Things/everybody from Massachusetts booth, but whenever I walked by she seemed to be tied up talking to somebody, so I didn't get a chance to inquire further about it (probably a great problem to have, as a game designer). I did make sure to grab one of her fancy bookmarks for the game and researched it a bit following the convention. The game, which for those unfamiliar, is a GM-less collaborative world-building game of sorts, I found super interesting and kind of outside of anything else I've run into in gaming to this point.
Not having much available cash (I'm having a baby finally!), I couldn't scoop this one up as quickly as I wanted, but fortuitously enough Make Big Things offered it for free for Free RPG Day and I grabbed the digital version until I have the free scratch to pick up a physical copy like I always need to do. Actually having the game rules and seeing how it helps with such deep collaboration only made me more fascinated. While it clearly functions as a game in and of itself, what I find most compelling is how well it can tie into any other game for a campaign. Seriously - for any system you enjoy or want to start a new game with, start first with a session or two of Questlandia to flesh out the setting. You can pull characters and world details from that game into the next when you move systems, and having that as a jumping off point for a campaign is bananas awesome to me.
Cons!
I've been itching to go to a gaming convention lately, most likely due to my regular groups dropping off due to scheduling and life. However, we're kind of outside of the big con seasons, and unfortunately I missed almost all of them besides PAX East. There is the Boston Festival of Indie Games coming up in the next few weeks, which I've been debating heading down for. It seems to be more tabletop and video games than roleplaying, but I still think I'll end up heading down. While I'm clearly more of a roleplaying geek, there are still some appealing board games and indie video games I get into from time to time, and at worst it'll be a chance to hang out with some new gamer people. I do need to make it a mission to attend JiffyCon next year though.
Anyway, hopefully there will be some more substantial progress with the things I'm working on soon.
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