The Mighty Atom

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.

GHOST/ECHO Wordles

2009-03-05T17:12:00.000-08:00

Brandon came up with a cool idea. He took the setting words for GHOST/ECHO and made an excel sheet that randomly weights them so you can make Wordles out of them.

It's easier to understand if you take a look at one.

(click for full size)

I like how the Wordle arrangement suggests relationships between the elements, as well as putting more emphasis on certain elements.

See the discussion thread on Story Games for more.

GHOST/ECHO v1.1

2009-02-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

I made a few small tweaks to the PDF.

Here's the new version: GHOST/ECHO v1.1

GHOST/ECHO

2009-02-15T16:37:00.000-08:00

I made a little micro-game experiment thing, called GHOST/ECHO. You can grab the 2-page PDF if you want to check it out.

Head over to the Story Games thread to discuss.

Gamers League Shirt

2009-01-19T16:00:00.000-08:00

Here's the new shirt design, which is available now from Spreadshirt.

UPDATE: If you want a 3XL shirt, use this link: http://www.spreadshirt.com/us/US/-/Detail-3376/Marketplace/Products/detail/article/4110469/

On the Wicked Range...

2009-01-07T16:33:00.000-08:00

We played In A Wicked Age... last night in a Western setting, and it was great. I'll tell about it in another post.

We used the Western Oracle from Abulafia, plus some custom sheets I made up for the occasion. Figured y'all might be of a mind to download 'em for yer own use. The PDF contains a selection of the Western oracle entries as well as custom Western-themed sheets for PCs and NPCs.

On the Wicked Range PDF [336KB]

You Can't Ruin the Story

2009-01-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

Over on his blog, Play Passionately, Jesse Burneko talks about the role of "story" in (one sort of) RPG play, and how radical changes in the fictional situation impact the players. It's good stuff. Also, Brand Robins's comments are (as usual) spot on.

Check it out here: You Can't Ruin the Story

Expectations and Permissions

2008-12-17T17:01:00.001-08:00

If you're not reading this thread on The Forge, you're missing out. Vincent is exploring some good stuff here, on the topic of expectations and permissions (specifically in his new game, Apocalypse World, but it also applies broadly to gaming in general). This is critical stuff.

Also, some new stuff is up on [Re]covery. Takeshi Kovacs, baby.

(re)covery

2008-12-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

All this cover-making has been very fun. So I started a new blog, just for re-imagining cover designs (using Scott's great photos). Check it out:

http://re-covery.blogspot.com/

I plan to update only when the mood strikes me, so grab the RSS feed if you're interested.

The Lives of Others

2008-12-09T18:07:00.001-08:00

Another photo by Scott, made into a Criterion DVD box by me.

The type is DIN. German movie = German font.

Random Book Cover

2008-12-06T16:26:00.001-08:00

Scott took a cool photo, and I suddenly had this book cover image in my head. So I had to make it.

Grim & Perilous

2008-11-04T23:24:00.000-08:00

I owe you a post (or five) about the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game we're doing now. It's going very, very well. Some might call it awesome, even.

I'm not quite ready to dissect and explain yet, though. But I'll need this stub of a post here to remind me for later.

But: Demonic pregnancy. Yeah, it's like that.