New Year's Resolutions

I am the Warden!!

Seeing as it's Christmas Eve Eve (yeah, that's right!) and 'tis the season for being with friends and family, I'm going with the assumption this will be the last post of 2011. Odds are I'll be right back online Monday, but let's play it safe, shall we?

2011 was the first full year of development for the Optional System and it's been an amazing experience thus far. But I've rambled on about this before. What I'd like to do now is write down some New Year's resolutions for the Optional System in 2012 in a non-binding yet highly encouraging format.

Publish Killshot: An Assassin's Journal
While my initial plan was to produce Redpill as the initial OS production, the Warden needs money. Plus, this mini-game has really started to take off and just screams for release. Some of the additions/alterations made to produce a smaller, faster version of the Optional System has lead to some dramatic changes to the core rules and I can't wait to click my DriveThruRPG bookmark and find Killshot's cover on the home page.

An Unexpected Bonus

I am the Warden!!

Finding the right playtesters can be a grueling exercise. Some send you excited emails eagerly awaiting the opportunity to test out your game and are never heard from again. Others seem to take the role seriously for the first little while until you start asking for follow-ups and read replies with nothing more than "Meh, it's OK." The remaining 10% take on this responsibility as requested and provide you with detailed accounts of their playtest and recommendations on what they found strong and lacking.

And then there are the few, the proud, the truly dedicated. The ones who treat playtesting like becoming godparents. I'm so proud to say Killshot has a table full of those playtesters.

I received an email last night from Brandon Neff and his wife, Cherie, who happens to run an acrylic printing business in Utah. They have taken the liberty of doing more than just reading, reviewing, and playing Killshot. A lot more.

They're putting together a 12" long Killshot logo. What you see here is the first step and from what I've been told, the completed version has been assembled with all the gory blood splatter and is on it's way to Canada. This is fucking awesome and will become a proud addition to my office - the space has already been set aside. Infinite thanks to Cherie and Brandon for this incredible gesture and I can't wait to hold that sucker in my hands.

Redefining the Pass Option

I am the Warden!!

Received an email last night from a playtester last night regarding the Pass option.

"This is listed as an automatic option. It was mentioned earlier that it cost nothing. Is this correct?"

By this, he wonders if the Pass option automatically costs an option because it is... well, an automatic option. According to my own rules, automatic options always cost a Team one option, yet the purpose of the Pass option is to freely allow Teammates to pass the Edge back and forth to each other at no cost.

This is one of the dangers in designing a truly original game and presenting it for the first time to outside players. In my head, the whole concept makes perfect sense and has nothing but clarity when I read it, but that's never the case when others absorb the same material. Defining this particular option has always been a tricky issue and I think it's now time to address it once and for all. The Pass option is a fundamental component of the Team mechanic. Without it, a Team cannot function as intended.

Grab your screwdrivers, people. It's time to make some adjustments.

Killshot: Behold, the Cover

I am the Warden!!

Mission accomplished! Killshot's playtest draft has been assembled and emailed to playtesters, making a fitting marker to end 2011. A full year of design and development on the Optional System has lead to a working draft of a game which is completely out of my hands. All playtests conducted so far this year have all been run by me and it's incredibly easy to run a fledgling game when you're the creator - I know what I meant when I wrote the rules. But do the rules makes sense to someone else?

Because I'm a graphic designer, I can't just send off a PDF from a Word file. I need a cover.

Playtesting will take place in January (fingers crossed) and likely continue towards March. During that time, I'll be working on layout and marketing in the hopes of having Killshot listed on DriveThruRPG by April/May 2012, including a Print-On-Demand copy. That's what I can't wait for - to have a professionally printed, bound copy of my first Optional System game. Sigh.

Until that fateful day arrives, I've set up a Killshot page for the blog. As production progresses, I'll keep posts here as well as provide previews, FAQ, and whatever other goodies I can come up with, including a little trick I thought about for a free PDF copy of the game.

The Year of Experimentation

I am the Warden!!

The year is coming to a close and what a dramatic year it's been. While I could easily get into all the personal trials and tribulations of 2011, we'll stay on topic and talk about how the Optional System finally went from being random thoughts assembled from countless dog walks to an actual work-in-progress which has consumed my life. Looking back on this past year, I prefer to call it "The Year of Experimentation."

On January 2nd, the very first dice were rolled for the Optional System with my good friend, Kieron, volunteering to make the trip up here specifically for playtesting. We kept it simple, an undercover drug deal gone wrong with our lone, intrepid hero caught in the crossfire. There were no rules written down and Kieron's character sheet was a collection of scribbles, corrections, and amazing sketches (Kieron's an amazing artist - go to Links and check out his work from there). Oh, and he died twice. Like I said, it was a true work-in-progress.

Rule Number One: Building the First Killshot Job

I am the Warden!!

With Monday as a write-off - the problem with going through rehabilitation and assessments - I was really starting to feel the pressure. Two weeks ago, Killshot was supposed to be ready for playtesting. The boys were raring to go and simply needed the text and time. But something was missing.

Killshot: An Assassin's Journal RPG will contain three adventures, or "jobs," for players to try out in the competitive world of murder-for-hire. What hit me early on in the design process was that I've yet to write down a formal presentation for an Optional System adventure... and now was time to put up or shut up.

Killshot: The Logo

I am the Warden!!

75% of the first draft for Killshot sits on the screen at the moment. The remaining quarter consists of the first 3 jobs to be published in Killshot: An Assassin's Journal, but I'm tackling some heavy rewrites to create a solid storyline between each job rather than just pop out a trio of random assassinations. Whenever I hit these kinds of blocks, I always find logo design helpful to get the juices flowing.

Soooooo......

I had some initial hesitation with the sniper's scope as it seems a little overused, but there's no denying its visual impact for instant recognition. When you look at this logo, it defines this game. I played around with using a grenade and a bullet hole to replace the "O" in Killshot with less significant results.

Now I'm ready to do some rewrites.