The Mighty Atom

Thief RPG

2009-11-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

I am a big fan of the Thief series of video games. I've always wanted to play an RPG in that world (or something loosely inspired by it). Chatting with Matt just now lead to us writing the game. You have two stats (stolen from 3:16):

Sneaking Around (SA)

Not Sneaking Around (NSA)

Divide 10 points between them; roll under to succeed. Done and done. Might have to actually play this at some point.

Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands

2009-10-21T13:36:00.001-07:00

You all know about Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands, right?

I assumed you would, if you cared about awesome things.

I think you have to register to see all of it. But whatever. It's a free gritty fantasy RPG and it's friggin' great. Check it out. I am seriously itchin' to play it now.

4 People or Less, Please

2009-10-13T13:17:00.001-07:00

Story Now play is much more difficult with 5 or more people at the table. Often, the game plain doesn't work at all.

Discuss.

Lauren O'Connell

2009-10-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

You know about Lauren, right?

Okay, good. I just had to make sure. Her new album is on iTunes now.

Still Funny

2009-10-02T16:41:00.001-07:00

"We tried to play Primetime Adventures, but it wasn't exactly like how our group usually plays so we got confused and sad."

This sentiment gets posted periodically. It still cracks me up. I always want to say, "It's almost like... PTA is a different game or something! Crazy."

Yesss.

2009-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

Just look what you've done now.

Thanks, everybody.

(photo courtesy of old timey cam)

Buy Me A Drink

2009-09-28T20:53:00.001-07:00

I have a donate button now. If you want to give me money for my "free" games (and some of you do, apparently) feel free to buy me a drink or six.

Click the button here:
http://www.onesevendesign.com/

Pics of said drink(s) provided upon request.

Hammers: Threat or Menace?

2009-08-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

The game says, "When there's a nail, use a hammer."

The gamers see a nail. They pick up the hammer and smash each other's heads with it.

"Ow!" they say. "Urk!"

"Hammers suck!" they say. "For proof, you need only look at our bleeding scalps!"

"This game sucks, too," they say. "Because it told us to use a stupid hammer. Which hurts us in the head."

The game, second edition, says, "When there's a nail, use a hammer. DON'T BASH YOUR HEAD WITH THE HAMMER."

Hands are crushed instead. Little progress is made.

The Geek's Guide to Getting the Girl

2009-08-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend has started to post excerpts from her geek's dating advice book on her blog. If you are a hetero male geek looking for love, check it out at:

http://geeksdatingguide.blogspot.com/

Danger Patrol: The Highlight Reel

2009-07-23T10:50:00.001-07:00

Jason Morningstar has started a thread on storygames to collect your most dangerous moments from Danger Patrol games. Come join in the fun.

Project VANGUARD

2009-07-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

Matt Wilson's new alpha playtest doc for Project: Vanguard is online now.

It is, in a word, superawesome. Plus, it shares a core dice mechanic with Danger Patrol (and Savage Worlds!) so you know it must be good.

Danger Patrol Alpha: Whoops!

2009-07-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

There was a mis-copied paragraph in the PDF I posted yesterday. It's all fixed now. You should download it again, though. Sorry about that.

Danger Patrol Alpha 07.12.09

2009-07-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

New draft available!

Danger Patrol Alpha Playtest 07.12.09

I changed the Style and Role card layouts so they're easier to use (you just print the whole set and then cut the sheets in half). I also added an example for action scene 2, changed the helping rules, cut action tokens (everything works with power tokens now), and cleaned up the text a bit.

This will be the stable alpha draft for now. I'll continue to collect feedback and suggestions for an eventual beta draft some time down the line. Thanks to everyone who helped out to make the alpha version better.

(FYI: The links in the announcement post, below, have been updated to the new version, so you can still link to that post to share the game if you want to.)

Danger Patrol AP Links

2009-07-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

A few groups have played Danger Patrol and I wanted to acknowledge them and link to their actual play reports for my own future reference.

Danger Patrol: Terror of the Stygians. Matt Wilson, Brennan Taylor, Gil Hova, Rich Flynn.

Danger Patrol: Nth Dimensional Chaos in Boston. Jonathan Walton and team.

Danger Patrol: Danger at the Gravity Ballet of Danger. Jason Morningstar, Steve Segedy, Joel Coldren, Mike Graves.

The Compleat Strategist Audio Recording. Featuring Danger Cadet Johnny! George Austin, Sam Zeitlin, Jonathan Davis, Joe Iglesias, and Nick X.

The Oklahoma City All-Stars (audio recording, link coming): Joshua Unruh, Jeff Williams, Chris Harmon, Chris Masters, Paul Crowell

EDIT: More!

Let Me Tell You All About Danger Patrol

Attack of the Plutonian Apes!

Danger Patrol Cocktails

Thanks to everyone for playtesting and giving feedback.

A new draft of the playtest kit will be out later tonight!

Danger Patrol Alpha Playtest

2009-07-06T00:32:00.000-07:00

The time has come. The time... for DANGER.

Danger Patrol is a retro sci-fi action/adventure game designed for fast play with no prep. Grab the alpha playtest PDF and have a go at making your own 50s-style TV adventure serial in the style of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Indiana Jones (if Indy regularly went to Venus).

This alpha draft needs testing! It got a good workout recently at Go Play NW 2009, but more is always better. If you have a chance to give it a read and especially if you play it, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Podcast Interview is Up

2009-06-01T16:33:00.001-07:00

Brennan Taylor interviewed me for the Voice of the Revolution podcast and the episode is online now. We talk about the recent mini-game thing I've been doing with GHOST/ECHO, The Mustang, and Lady Blackbird. It's fairly short and sweet, and I forget to actually say what G/E and The Mustang are about, but overall I think it went pretty well. I'm happy to answer questions or talk further about any topic here.

Lady Blackbird Play By Post

2009-05-08T17:29:00.001-07:00

Some folks are playing Lady Blackbird by post over on RPGnet. Cool things are already happening early on, including the idea of using alternate and foreign words for swearing, Firefly style. "Shacklin'" has been suggested as an all purpose curse, and I heartily approve. "There's a shacklin' hole in the side of the ship!" Yeah, that's going into our games of LB.

EDIT: For future reference, the In-Character Thread and the Out-of-Character Thread.

One Seven Design Page Updated

2009-05-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to fixing my old home page: http://www.onesevendesign.com/. It now features links to the pages for my games (except for Agon... I haven't made its button yet). I'll keep this page updated from now on so you can always find my game stuff there.

Free Quick-Play Games

2009-05-03T15:41:00.001-07:00

Several of these have cropped up lately, so I'm making a little catalog. Let me know if I've missed anything or when new stuff comes out, and I'll edit this post to keep the list current.

Geiger Counter by Jonathan Walton. Make your own survival horror flick! Also by Jon: Mare Caspium. Fairy tales in the time of the Khazars.

Vanguard: Shrine of the Aegis by Matt Wilson. Space adventure in the style of BSG and Firefly.

Lunar Notes (Page 1, Page 2) by Marshall Burns. Magical musicians hunt spirits using the power of their instruments.

War Inc! and Shadow & Ash by Kaare Berg. Cyberpunkish corporate warfare and spirits lost in the dreamlands, respectively.

Codename Eliezer by Sage LaTorra. Crash survivors on a mysterious island.

Red Box Hack by Eric Provost. Fantasy adventure in the old-skool spirit.

And my games: GHOST/ECHO, Lady Blackbird, and The Mustang.

Lady Blackbird on Here Be Gamers podcast

2009-04-28T16:00:00.001-07:00

Episode 4 of the Here Be Gamers podcast features a lengthy review of Lady Blackbird and some AP notes. Thanks to Nathan and Marty for saying such nice things about the game. The whole show is good, but if you just want to hear the LB part, it starts at 50:24.

Lady Blackbird Age of Sail Hack

2009-04-28T13:05:00.001-07:00

Man, this makes my day (week? month?). Richard Lacy has made a new version of Lady Blackbird set in the Age of Sail. Check it out. It's really, really good.

Lady Blackbird

2009-04-24T06:12:00.001-07:00

I have a new game project, a free steampunk adventure module called Lady Blackbird. It's designed as a quick-start game set, so you can run a fun game with no prep for 2-5 other people. It has rules, situation, setting, and pregen characters all ready to go. You can get the PDF at the game website (or by clicking on the button in the left column over there).

I plan to update the PDF as it gets refined in play over the next few weeks, then lock it into a final form. I also have some plans for selling a printed version of the module, as well as add-on modules with new situations, characters, and rules bits.

Stay tuned for more. And if you play, please head over to Story Games and talk about it.

GenCon Seminar: Layout & Art

2009-04-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

Matt Snyder and I did a talk at GenCon about layout and art for small press publishers. It's online now thanks to the Sons of Kryos:

http://www.sonsofkryos.com/GC08sem06.mp3

Check it out.

Little Game Chef '09: The Mustang

2009-04-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

I participated in Little Game Chef this year. It was fun and there were a lot of cool games in the mix. And... I won the darn thing. Which is pretty sweet. My game is called The Mustang. You can grab the PDF by clicking on the image below.

The judges said nice things about it, which I really appreciate. I think it turned out rather well. But I agree with Eero (the EVIL judge) that it's not a "game" exactly. I don't know what the heck it is, really.

Anyway, I really like Jonathan Walton's entry, Mare Caspium. You should check it out. It has Khazars and everything. That was my pick for the winner.

Here's the Game Contest Thread and Judges' Results Thread.

EDIT: Oh yeah! They had an award named for me as part of LGC. The Harper Award went to the game that used the 2-page restriction well and had good layout. The winner went to the very cool looking hand-written game, Redemption Night by M. Jason Parent.

Why I always use the term "Story Games" ironically

2009-03-07T13:07:00.000-08:00

Eero said something over on the forum that really resonated with me, so I'm posting it here as a way of preserving it for myself.

"I can't get really interested in [the games] where I'm supposed to be responsible for creating a good story. As far as I'm concerned, I want the rules mechanics to take care of that part so I can focus on playing my character / throwing nasty stuff at the player characters or whatever other fun things there are in the game to be done. 'Making a story' is not on my list of fun things for roleplaying simply because when I want to make a story, I write one."

I want to take the phrase "It would make a better story if..." out behind the woodshed and shoot it. At least its use during play, anyway. During post-game debriefing it has its place. But too much story-planning during actual play just annoys the crap out of me. Who's definition of "better story" are we supposed to be using, anyway? And are we really going to hash that all out in the moment, while someone is holding dice in their hand?

Overt, explicit story-planning during play is like having an editor watching over your shoulder while you compose your novel. It kills the creative process with over-analysis and robs roleplaying of one of its core features: unplanned, dynamic, creative collaboration that can take any final shape. "Good stories" be damned.