When you’re lying awake in the night and dreaming new dreams about far off places and alien races, in science fiction and fantasy, and you think it might be easy to invent something new. No. A few years ago, some of us tried to write a science fiction background which included some elements from sci-fi…
Category: Game Design
Progress and updates on the game design process.
I bought a book today…
…entirely because it was illustrated and designed exactly the way I want Q to be paid out. I spent a few minutes leafing through it and in my minds eye transposed the text and art to that which I envision for Q. Looking over my Q notes the other day reminded me of the parts…
Heroics, Risk and immersion.
James “JimJamJom Jimbo” Wallis writes about Heroics: Of course, a lot depends on how the player views their avatar, whether they regard the game-character they’re controlling as ‘me’, as a companion who they care about, or as a disposable camera and weapon-wielding tool. … But basically players don’t like risk. They like the appearance of…
The Game I’d Play Right Now
I’m having a lot of fun writing half-a-games at the moment. You know – getting the grist of a game together. I’m not really enjoying the layout/art section though I’m sure I’ll get round to it. Illusion is almost ready to go. Six requires about another few weeks. It’s all good. I have a hankering…
Natural Wonders
The Giant’s Causeway is one of the most astounding natural formations in Northern Ireland. This got me thinking about the representations of natural wonders in gaming. In the Aurore Sourcebook for 2300AD, they described a tidal flood plain which was so flat that the tides, sped by the influence of the large lunar satellite on…
Crucible Design’s Games on Sale at Key20.
After what seems an age, the first roleplaying games I wrote are on sale again at Key20 SpaceNinjaCyberCrisis XDO The 23rd Letter ( RPG.net Review ) Zombi: The Earth Won’t Hold The Dead ( Review by Jeff Rients ) I’ve linked to reviews before but they’re easily searchable anyway.
I haven’t eaten anything since later this afternoon.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Time Killers game – mostly about whether or not there is room for ANOTHER time travel game out there. One of the best time travel games I’ve ever read was Continuum (1999) which really went to town on background and gave special focus to making sure you fulfill…
I tolerate this century but I don’t enjoy it.
Jim passed me this link about Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day.. Now imagine mixing this with KILLER and I think you’d have a bundle of fun with your time-travelling cohorts. Then again, there’s always >a href=”http://www.johntitor.com/”>this guy.
An update and also “Under Development”
These are the games I’m currently working on – as in trying to spend an hour every night writing something, anything. Some nights are more productive than others. I’m only hampered my Black Macbook being pinched by my partner because she has more important stuff to do but hopefully before the end of September that…
CONTROL
Tonight I put together the first eight pages of CONTROL, a game I hope to release in PDF form in just two weeks, time permitting. CONTROL is an espionage game set at the start of the second Cold War, a period of intense emotions which I remember well. The game itself uses the model of…
Racer
For the last forever, Aidan and I were working on a new game. It started out as an idea for a videogame based on racing through courses around the Solar System, such as skimming the rings of Saturn or around an asteroid with an irregular spin. The idea was exciting – at least to us….
Spy games …
Over the last few hours I’ve been watching episodes of ‘The Sandbaggers’ – a Cold War spy thriller TV series which aired in the late 70s and early 80s. Twenty episodes were made and though it was not popular at the time, it is one of the few TV shows I’ve seen with truly intelligent…
The Quiet Time
We’ve not posted much in the last couple of weeks. This has been for a few reasons: Real life has got in the way of roleplaying Real life has got in the way of writing about roleplaying We’ve been talking about direction … #3 is probably most interesting. We were working on a few (…
A hatred of self and the games that do it.
How many games put you in the role of playing Ordinary Joe? Not many. A recent thread on TheRPGSite talks about: Originally Posted by The RPG Cliche List Nephilim Law. In modern-day occult games, mortal humans are considered to have the same intrinsic worth as cattle. (So named for Nephilim, a game that is particularly…
Pan’s Labyrinth
Watched it last night round with Aidan, Abi and some ice cream. It’s a good movie – personally I don’t think it’s the same sort of emotional tour-de-force as perhaps Fight Club or American History X or even Watership Down but it’s a good movie nonetheless. They manage skillfully remove a lot of the anticipation…
Art:
northerain is the blog of the artist behind Bloodsong Media. I like his stuff which he describes as: My style is more or less based on existing photographs. I use those to paint over them in photoshop. Since they’re not sketches, it’s impossible to do it in black and white. Sounds perfect for both The…
Riffing off The 23rd Letter.
Ghost Whistler on RPG.net came up with a23rd Planet idea. He was riffing off the name of the game but it made me think tonight about: The 23rd Century Fast forward events in The 23rd Letter by two hundred years and you might have an idea of a micro-setting. Making psychics essential for space travel…
Bit of a buzz on these days
I’ve been writing a lot more these last few days – ironically not much on the two tasks I have been given – but plenty on other stuff which I shouldn’t be doing. I got some new books as well which I hope to tear through and get reviews up as soon as possible. Maybe…
Status: Refugee – Perspective Selection
One thing that was bugging me about this game was that which we’ve discussed on a number of occasions about different games: scope. If you are playing refugees with only a small number of worlds available to you, the sheer scope for play is mind-boggling. This then probably requires either a lot of work on…
Look out of genre for ideas.
This thread on TheRPGSite looks for some ideas about how to populate a story based on the theme “Traveller: it came from jumpspace!. Some of the ideas are very good while some of them are little more than a re-telling of Alien. Look outside of the genre. Watch some movies which are not typically sci-fi….