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.

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.

Getting My Wheels Burning

Busy and productive week this has been!  After months of trying toying with the idea of various different game designs and hitting various walls with each one, I had a random bit of inspiration the end of last week, and put together the early parts of a new game!  It's obviously still very raw, but I'm very excited with the shape that it's taken so far.  I gathered up some additional materials that I'll need, and I think the next step is to actually start some playtesting.  I've never hit this stage with a game before, so this is all very exciting.  Once I get a bit father along, I'll likely try to recruit some additional playtesters to get some more eyes on it.  But still, progress.

Also very exciting is the fact that I received my Kickstarter copy of the Burning Wheel Codex.  For those unaware, the Codex is a sort of rerelease of the original books that made up the original Burning Wheel set but weren't included in Gold - specifically, the Monster Burner, Adventure Burner, and the Magic Burner.

The Burning Wheel Codex

So not that I finally have the complete rules in hand, I've been pouring through everything pretty regularly.  The essays contained in the Adventure Burner in particular have been fantastic to go through, with a lot of great advice on running the game itself and some pretty rad ideas of gaming and GMing as a whole.

Anyway, the biggest upside of all the information contained in the Codex is that now I have better tools for making a setting to run a campaign!  Outside of the people I've played with online, the majority of the people I play (and I think a lot of casual gamers in general) are more likely to get behind the idea of a new game or campaign based on the setting.  So which one is the best to explore with my fancy new books?

Banner Saga
This one is partially on me playing this one recently, or rather Banner Saga 2, but I think from a Burning Wheel standpoint there are a lot of awesome possibilities.  The setting itself is pretty close to the out-the-box Sagas of the Icelanders game, but with enough distinctions that I think there would be a lot missed running in that system.  In particular, I think BW allows for really trying to flesh out the hulking Varl.  Still, pretty niche audience I think for the most part.

Elder Scrolls
In keeping with the northern European but not quite viking high fantasy idea, the Elder Scrolls series provides some great options for running a game I think.  The setting itself is incredibly fleshed out, which is a benefit as well as a bit of constraint, as there's more room for butting up against canon in terms of campaigns.  Not the hugest deal in the world, but something to think about.  The other question in using the Tamriel is settling on the primary province of the game, and how that will affect mechanics.  Skyrim?  At least one person is going to want to play as a dragonborn, meaning shouts will need to be fleshed out.  There's also a much greater number of race options that will need to be determined.  The various man and mer races are likely to be covered by limiting and tweaks various existing lifepaths, but what about the kaihjit?  Or the argonians?  Some heavy lifting would be required here.

Which, I think, brings me to my most likely setting for a future Burning Wheel game.

Witcher 3
I'll confess something here:  I have Witcher 3.  I've played Witcher 3.  I have, as of yet, been unable to really get into Witcher 3.  This is largely to due with the control schemes of the game itself, particularly when it comes to combat.  For whatever reason, the game is very counter-intuitive to my play style when it comes to video games.  However, what is inarguable is that I do find the game world itself incredibly fascinating, well developed, and (perhaps most importantly for my purposes here) open.

There's a lot of generic in Witcher 3 that I think it would be simple enough to try and convert to a default setting like Burning Wheel's, and likely without much fuss.  Are there towns in Witcher 3?  Are there important characters?  Yes, of course.  But while I know many players could tell you there's a character named The Bloody Baron, I would think fewer would be able to tell you what the name of his town is.  I'm a fairly reactionary GM - I plan scenarios, I'm good at interpreting player action and coming up with creative responses to that action, even if I didn't plan anything ahead of time.  Where I am very weak is in carefully planning out encounters and fleshing out the meticulous details of a world.  I'm perfectly fine referring to a town as "that place we went where the duke killed his wife while we were there" in my groups, and I'm much more apt to remember that than the name of the town anyway.

That being said, it doesn't mean there's no work to be done in order to convert Burning Wheel's default setting framework over to Witcher 3.  For one thing, there's a lot of limiting of the available character races.  Dwarves would make sense given their roles in the game, elves would be iffy I think, but no orcs.  Really I would ideally limit the PC choices to human and dwarf.  Then, assuming the players are mostly planning on playing witchers, there need to be some specific traits made up.  Witchers are sterile in game terms, and also have their unique cat eyes that allow them to see the magic secrets in the world around them, so there's some call-on or die traits to be dealt with there.

Where the Codex really caught my eye as it relates to the way magic and the witchers actually tackling supernatural creatures would be handled.  The game is largely based around northern European folklore, so the system works perfectly there with the Folklore skill.  Players can use that to try and discern remedies and charms for combating various ghouls and beasts, very similar in that regard to how the story progresses in the actual game.  The bigger question relates to how the game would handle magic.  The game has witches and the like in it, so there are some spells there, but by and large the witchers themselves have only a handful of magical powers to work with.  These come off less like true spells in the traditional RPG sense and more general skills that happen to be magical in nature.

This, I think, would be something best covered by using the Art Magic rules rather than the standard sorcery rules built into the system.  For the most part, the spells like Igni and such would be covered pretty well by the various functions of the Sorcery skill under the Art Magic rules, maybe with some slight tweaking and interpretation.  The big thing is that, in trying to emulate the game world, the witchers less learn new spells as they do improve their existing powers, which grow in strength as they go on.  In that sense, it seems to me to work better to just have a single skill, broken into different schools of magic in order to allow a bit more customization opportunity and less ability to munchkin as much, and having that skill improve through play as the game wears on.  Plus, then we don't have to constantly remember exact spell names and functions (again, planning and details aren't exactly my thing).

This will take some time and some percolating as far as the specifics go, but I think there's enough here to work with.  Once I get things fleshed out a bit more, I'll try and post some of my tweaks and such for anybody else out there who'd like to run their own Witcher game.

As always, thanks for reading.