BEES?!

So I've been working on a game...

I've tinkered with game design a bit over the past year or so, with a couple of different attempts producing half-finished designs that will need to be revisited later.  But I think I've stumbled upon something that I wanted to share with all of you.  What's the game about?

BEES!!!!

Well, not just bees, but any type of social insect really.  The game is based around the idea of working through the various obstacles that would befall a beehive or ant colony through one year as they prepare for a New England winter.  The game took inspiration from Questlandia and also from a 200-word game created by Grant Howitt called Exodus.

I've done a number of solo playtests (the game functions perfectly well solo),  but I would love for other people who are willing to take a stab at running it and give me their feedback.  The playtest document is available here.

The game itself is, as mentioned, based on the idea of a beehive working through a year in preparation for their winter hibernation.  Play is broken into three turns, which signify one of the seasons - the first turn is Spring, the second Summer, and the third Autumn.  At the beginning of each turn, players draw six cards from a deck of playing cards to determine which issues they need to address to get their hive through that season safely.  Any issues that aren't fully dealt with in a given season carry over to the next.  At the end of the third turn, the survival of the hive depends on the strength of its Queen to power through any remaining issues.

The problems are dealt with by using the usual citizens of a hive - Workers, who carry out most tasks; Soldiers, who provide the muscle and defend the hive; and Drones, whose sole function is to mate with the Queen and reproduce.  These groups are represented by dice pools, but are very vulnerable, and so their numbers can dwindle quickly as they carry out their tasks.

If this sounds like a game you're interested in playing, feel free to download it from the link above and give it a spin.  Any feedback is more than welcome.

Curse the GMs!

So for those that are unaware, there's been a fairly tongue-in-cheek hashtag going around the G+ called #INDIEGAMEaDAY2016.  Similar in nature to the #RPGaDAY hashtag that goes around every year, this one tends to poke a bit of fun at a lot of the trends around indie RPGs and try and get everyone to not take their hobby so ultra-seriously.  For an example, here's today's topic:

#INDIEGAMEaDAY2016

16. Are GMs abusers, control freaks, or both? Best story explaining why this is so.

Now if you don't follow indie RPGs too closely, this might not land for you, but a lot of indie games strive for player agency and there's more than a few GM-less systems out there (one of which I've talked about before and will do so again in a bit).  But anyway, I'm not going to discuss the hashtag itself, because I thankfully have no GM horror stories to share.  However, the question did get me thinking about GMing, my style, and why I got started into it.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but I only very recently got into GMing, probably within the past two years or so.  My first real run of it was an online Mouse Guard PbP game with a group of people I've been playing with for years, kind of as a feeler.  I had a campaign idea, and we had a player dropping out, so I asked the person who had been running the game for years if he would mind letting me run the game for a bit.  He was delighted, and I ran a fairly decent campaign, especially for a first time running it, but had some issues.  Primarily, running a PbP game is a completely different animal, and the chief challenge is keeping everybody focused and checking in regularly.  I quickly learned I am very bad at this, as I am not a generally authoritative person by nature.  I ran I think one full year, three sessions, and then burned out from chasing one of the players and turned things back over to the original GM.

The experience did reinforce my own feelings on why a lot of people end up GMing, though:  they want to play games.  If you enjoy a game or a system enough, you want to play it, and it is the eternal struggle of a gaming hobbyist that they don't ever have enough players to play with.  And so in order to play a game they want to play, they have to convince other people to play with them, and the easiest way to do this is to volunteer to do the heavy lifting and run the game for the other players.  Ask your GM if they'd mind you taking over for a bit and watch their eyes light up.  Seriously, do it.

That being said, I think there is definitely a group that prefers GMing to being a PC, and I think I may be skewing more towards this end of things the more games I run.  I have always been a writer at heart from childhood on.  I have never been published and never have really put much effort into that end of things, but I've always written stories if for nobody else but myself.  It's part of the reason I play the video games I do (only massive open world games where I can create a character and do my thang.  Your game doesn't have a story?  Perfect.  I will make my own), and it definitely is a muscle that I enjoy flexing as a GM.  I find I enjoy putting together scenarios and watching players develop over time more than any character I have played.

For the most part, I enjoy improvising when I run games, and reacting more to what the players are doing than anything in particular that I planned, and so I gravitate more to those systems that allow me to do that.  It's one of the main reasons I have issues running a lot of OSR games where there's more prep involved.  But my primary focus with any game I run is simply to make sure everybody is having a good time and enjoying creating stories alongside me.

New Games!

I bought some new games!  Well, one new game and another game I already owned but only in a digital format.  

Questlandia

Questlandia I've written about before, and I already grabbed a digital copy when Hannah Shaffer offered it as a free download for Free RPG Day this year.  The game is so good, though, that I felt guilty having not paid for it.  That and it's typically much easier for me to get into games in physical format.  As I've said before, I really can't recommend this game enough for world building, both just for a fun game to play with friends and especially as a prep session to starting a longer campaign.  Once we wrap up our home Mouse Guard game, I'm planning on running this for a session or two to lead into a Burning Wheel campaign.

Ryuutama

Ryuutama is a game that is completely new to me, but one that I've had my eye on for quite a while.  I almost grabbed it at PAX East this year, which was the first time I had seen it, but thankfully waited and bought the physical/digital bundle from Kotohi direct.  Having both formats is kind of perfect for me, as it allows me to do session prep during my lunch break or slow days at work, while allowing me to get deeper into the game reading before bed.  Plus, I always prefer buying direct from creators whenever possible.

I started reading this one last night, and I really am excited to play it.  The system is kind of brilliantly simple, and it will make a great introductory game for people that have never roleplayed before.  I'm especially looking forward to eventually running this game with my daughter in a few years when she's old enough for gaming, provided she shows an interest.  This and Michtim are going to be my go-to early years roleplaying games, but both are also robust enough to easily entertain players of all ages for years.  If you have kids, or even if you just like cute stuff and also RPGs, you should definitely own both these games.

General Gaming Goodness

Between finally taking a vacation last week and this week being super busy (as first weeks back from vacation invariably are), it's been a bit since the last post.  I figured it worthwhile to give a few updates about my gaming-related life and where I'm at with certain things.

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.