7 Days: The Creation of the Wildpath System

I am the Warden!!

Regular readers are probably aware of the heaping plateful of responsibilities on my plate at the moment: Killshot Reloaded, school, video editing, launching a Kickstarter, even some ongoing plans for Optional Core, but it seems all that was just not quite enough. What can I say? I'm a sucker for lost causes.

Over the weekend, I posted a note on my bulletin board titled "List of Regrets." On there are two entries: NaNoWriMo 2012 and the D&D Next Character Sheet Contest. Both of these are contests or tryouts I wanted to invest time and energy into completing, yet never did. Why keep account of such failings? Because it's how I motivate myself to add less and less to the list. Every time I add something to the List of Regrets, I feel motivated to keep something off its ruled lines of damnation.

So when EN World announced a 7 day RPG design contest, I latched onto the idea and neurons started charging up. At the very least, my entry is accepted and potentially published if Russ likes what he sees and finds potential in it. At best, I stand to pull in a much needed $1000, meaning that only thing I stand to lose is skipping another entry on the List of Regrets.

I wanted to create an original RPG that could work within 20 pages, including character creation and setting material. That meant foregoing the standard RPG mechanics (unless I wanted to use an existing system, which I did not) and trying something simpler than my usual work. Going over various notes recorded into Evernote, I found some rough concepts for a story RPG system where players do not roll to see if their action succeeds, but rolls to determines how many times they get to take over the story in a round.

Why Am I Attacking That Guy?

Insert yo broodmama jokes....NOW!!

I am the Warden and I hate video games again!!

Back story. For the past couple of months, I've returned to the world of Dragon Age. Electronically, that is, in the form of Dragon Age: Origins for the Xbox 360. It's not my first time, but I've enjoyed it immensely more than my first time out due to two simple factors. One, elves aren't the glorious immortals made out in every other fantasy campaign known to existence. And two, I'm a rogue.

Yet last night's events have threatened to derail my efforts to finish this fucking game once more by striking at my weakest point: reminding me that it's a video game. During all three efforts to take on the infamously nippled broodmother (pictured above), my elf rogue continuously changed his mind on who he was going to attack, wandering off to get into some bizarrely accurate position against a tentacle or approaching shriek and throwing my entire plan of attack on its arse. Which is exactly where all my party members ended up, except dead.

I'm not sure if it's a glitch in this particular skirmish or intentionally done to complicate matters, but it broke the veil of fantasy and reminded me that I'm holding a controller in my hands and the commands and options presented are only limited to the decision put forth by the creators of the game. It's not the first time it's happened to me during a video game and it always leads to my dismissal from the game's presence, but this one was personal. I thought we had something, Dragon Age and I.

Name Recognition and Kickstarter

I am the Warden!!

After reading fellow OTGD Fraser Ronald post about his Kickstarter endeavor on the Black Gate site yesterday, this particular paragraph caught my eye, travelled along its corneal pathway and began feasting on the cognitive processes of my brain. In this post, Fraser's comparing his success to the success of another OTGD member, Jason Pitre, and his Spark RPG Kickstarter.

Compare the success of Centurion with the success of Spark. The difference? Jason Pitre has spent four years not only perfecting his game (puts my year to shame . . . head hanging over here) but also being heavily involved in the RPG community. That pays off when it comes time to release. He knows lots of people, and those people know his game, and they will proselytize for him. Now, I doubt Jason was only involved in the RPG community with the expectation of drawing on the community to help pimp his game, and I further doubt that his community ties were the only differences between our campaigns – Spark is a very different game than Centurion– but it helped to get the word out to people to whom his game would interest.

Publicity is a bitch. Or an asshole, depending on your preference. It's all fine and dandy to have created something, but it needs to latch on to the public's attention to grow, fester, and mature to become noticed, then appreciated, and finally applauded. It's a concentrated game of chance unless you have any combination of natural charisma, connections, money, and more importantly, time. This is something Jason Pitre had plenty of for his Spark RPG Kickstarter and kudos to him for it.

Of those four lucky charms, I have one. Time. And even then, I don't. It's the curse of hindsight to look at someone else's achievements and kick yourself for not aiming in the same direction and I try not to get caught up in doing things exactly like others. However, there are great lessons to learn from others and I'd offer no service to myself and my work if I didn't look at what these two have done (yes, Fraser, even you) and make notes.

Talkin' Kickstartin'

I am the Warden!!

An impromptu Hangout with fellow Ottawa designers Fraser Ronald (Centurion) and Jason Pitre (Spark RPG) turned into the latest episode of Collateral in the Accident Survivors network. It was a great opportunity for me to get an impression, answers, and suggestions for the Killshot Reloaded Kickstarter currently set to launch next month.

Listen and enjoy. And share.

Post-Traumatic Growth

I am the Warden and I command you to watch this video!!

I watched this one last night with the missus listening in from the kitchen and it was a profound experience. I've watched a few of these TED Talks before and found the discussions interesting or poignant, but this one truly spoke to me. Things made a little more sense.

I'd never heard of post-traumatic growth before and now that I have, it'll be interesting to see if any of the specialists I'm working with have heard of it as well... and if so, why the fuck haven't they ever said anything about it? Even since my accident - almost from Day Two, to be honest - I've been fixated on my quest to achieve my dream of professional tabletop game designer and publisher.

Fixated is the right word for the job. There is very little "common sense" that has detracted me from my quest, though that does not mean I've ignored it. If anything, I've embraced it and accepted its challenges, thereby redefining how I will approach my quest on the path to success. Will it require a lot of hard work and dedication? Yep, bring it on. Is there a chance to make a lot of money? Nope, and I don't much care. I've never had a lot of money nor any great success with it, so it's not like I'll have to learn to live without it. Would it have been better to approach this quest with stability, like that of a well-paying career by day and a string of nights working on the next RPG project? Definitely, but that's out of my control. For the longest time, I've always chalked it up to a need to fulfill a life's ambition before I truly die once and for all. An innate realization that I could have missed out completely if I was killed and I've often wondered if this pursuit was healthy.

Based on what Jane reveals in her presentation, it finally makes explains why I've been so driven at an unconscious level. In a good way. "Why" is an incredible device when you're dealing with trauma and if this woman has truly gone from suicidal thoughts to the cheerful and pleasant crusader for games we see above, then there is something truly powerful about her beliefs.

To quote Abed: "Cool. Cool cool cool." 

Cleaner, Simpler, Smaller!!

I am the Warden!!

Yesterday was the start of revisions for Killshot Reloaded's options chapter. You know those days when you get started on a large chapter/project and it starts with complete unawareness of just how much of a difference your work will bring? That was yesterday.

One of the primary goals for Reloaded is to create a cleaner version of the game while simultaneously allowing assassins and Directors more flexibility to take the game and run with it. While making a post on G+ about the process, it occurred that I've probably run close to 50 jobs for Killshot and various recent offshoots of the Optional System since it's creation and publication. In that time, I've noticed how players have translated and interpreted their options, listened to their opinions, and have now set a goal to use those opinions and concepts in mind for the new edition.

What I did not expect was just how improved these options have become. I hate putting it that way, because it instantly comes across as if the game was broken. And I hate saying THAT because the original edition of Killshot is by no means perfect (need I point out the major faux pas of having an option and skill both named "Survival").

Using My Big Boy Words

I am the Warden!!

You'd think by my blog alone that there's very little action going on right now, but that's so far from the truth. Aside from the official announcement of Killshot Reloaded (see the BRG site for details) and the progression of development in the new edition, I've also been plugging away on a new Kickstarter video for the upcoming Shaintar campaign by Sean Patrick Fannon, finishing up the final piece for Killshot Files #2, putting the next instalment of High Plains Samurai together, and working on a silent project on the side. If I haven't been posting enough, it's because I'm writing too much.

And that's the irony of today's post. It came to me last month that perhaps I haven't been writing enough, particularly when it comes to adventure design. When I'm running a game, I'm a massive fan of improvising. I'll detail a basic plot, flesh and stat out characters, establish locations, and run with everything as it plays out to provide players with a rich and reactive setting.

The problem is the contradiction with what I really need for adventure design and publication. It's something discovered during the past couple of Killshot or Optional Core sessions that must be seriously and correctly addressed in the new edition. When you don't write down the entire adventure and plan out your fight scenes in advance, you tend to take liberties with your text. For example, it never occurred to me during any of the various drafts for the three jobs published in Killshot: Direction to include a sidebar or any relevant information on how to set up a Tracker for a given scene. There were rules for determining all the chips needed on the board and that seemed good enough. What I've noticed is that without having a solid foundation to set up a scene through the game's mechanics, there's no telling how good or poor the scene will play out. So much information is missing from the text that Directors will have to embellish as they see fit and that can cause serious problems in game satisfaction.

Perhaps no other evidence is required than the outcome of the first session for High Plains Samurai. While the YouTube broadcast was cut out early and remains unavailable to those outside of the Development Team sitting at the table, the last fight scene went horribly awry. Everything went wrong and the fact that I never bothered to write down a set-up for the fight scene contributed to that problem. And it didn't help that my qi points mechanic was totally screwed up.

For tomorrow's game, I've made adjustments and wrote out every fight scene (all five of them) in complete detail, from how many Teams are provided in what order to a list of pre-existing triggers and outcomes for the fight using the new fight management system undergoing construction for Reloaded. How will it turn out? You can find out tomorrow as we stream a live broadcast of the game through the Optional Core community on G+.