The following quote is from “Cybergeneration”, an RPG dating from §993 by R. Talsorian Games. With direct visual feed, projected ICONs at will, and a way of interacting with these projections, all the pieces were now in place to create what we now call VIRTUALITY; a state where Net images and Realspace are combined in…
Category: Game Design
Progress and updates on the game design process.
The Great Game
Alternate Reality Games (or Layered Reality Games) are going to be big. When someone mentions ARGs, I always think of Total Recall (the film) [thanks Eamon]. The protagonist takes a virtual holiday which interweaves the real world with a spy conspiracy in his head (or is it?). Everything in his life becomes involved in the…
6 – Terminology
(Though I’m still unsure of the final name to call this game, for the time being I’m going to be referring to it both by the nom de plume ‘6’ and the nom de guerre ‘CONTROL’. I hope that suffices to confuse) AGENT – highly trained civil servants. Because of their skills and experience, they…
Viking Ghost Hunt – a ‘hyperlocal’ Dublin-based game
While down at the National Digital Research Centre last week, I saw a brief presentation from two Dutch guys, Soren and Mads, who were making an iPhone game which overlaid a game on top of reality using GPS and cell tower triangulation. From NDRC: Viking Ghost Hunt will capitalise on location based gaming. The interactive…
Fonts, fonts, my kingdom….
I’m having trouble identifying a font I used for the original printing of ZOMBI and this is the replacement I have come up with. The original was quite clean and had a name like ‘corroded’ or ‘corrupted’. The potential new one is CM Corruged by Charly Masci (link is down). I think it’s actually an…
Superheroics
I’ve been reading a lot and prepping my ‘superhero’ game and though I love the concept of GODLIKE and Wild Talents, it’s really turned into an exercise of accountancy. I don’t like point buy systems which encourage you to minmax. I’m frustrated by this because I can’t therefore find a system I want to use….
The WhiteChapel Project
The Project in Whitechapel was formed in September 1941 as a subsection of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE was directed to encourage espionage behind enemy lines and build the core of a resistance cell in the event of a land invasion. As a result, they were entirely dependent upon the security of radio…
Two Worlds: A State of Frenzy
“We’re doomed I tell you. That planet is hurtling through space towards the Earth and we haven’t the power to stop it.” Doctor Henry Warwick of the Royal Observatory could hardly have known that as he spoke, a rocketship sped through the ether towards the rogue planet on a mission to save the planet. Doctor…
Two Worlds
What if Prospero didn’t just loop through time and space but also dimensions? What if it revealed to the modern world the battleground of an unknown war, the genocides of a victorious hero, the possible fates of our world if he, and his two companions had failed in their attempt to stave off the destruction…
MURDERDROME: iPhone comic reader BANNED!
Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul’s house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone. There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader…
I have a pretty strong stomach…
…but this revolts me: A BOY of seven was kept chained in a cellar by his cannibal family — as they ATE parts of him. He had been partially skinned after monstrous mum Klara, 31, caged him for months while relatives who were also in a sick cult feasted on his raw flesh, an appalled…
Frontier ‘look and feel’
More of a precis to get the feel across. There are a few themes that I am exploring here. And I’m not being preachy about it. Western Europe is devastated and the USA is somewhat ruined but in recovery – this is due to a particularly nasty ABC war a couple of hundred years ago….
Frontier summaries
Summary: The basic setting assumes that players are highly skilled, highly motivated members of the Explorer division of Human Unity, a ‘federation’-alike government. Their job is to make contact, explore gaseous anomalies and try not to get killed in the process. Terms: Human Unity – the Human ’empire’ based upon very liberal concepts and including…
Frontier: History of the Future
In the first half of the twentieth century, humanity discovered, developed and weaponised nuclear fission. Through a small amount of vision and a large amount of luck, humanity managed to survive long enough to actually advance these weapons and when they had exhausted their capacity to destroy, they invented new methods. Pre-History During the twenty-first…
Frontier: man and machine
While the scientists of Human Unity have pushed the frontiers of science and innovation further than any of their ancestors, there are some areas which they have not dwelled heavily upon. About seventy years ago when the Experts were becoming relatively commonplace, there were two projects which, though opposite in their aim, were entirely complementary….
Frontier Swarmtech
Swarmtech is the application of robotics to nanotech principles. Nanotech is used extensively in molecular replicators – large immobile devices designed to replicate thousands of identical objects – often microscopic in scale which are then assembled by more mundate nanorobots into larger devices. The most advanced example of nanotech encountered by Human Unity lies within…
Frontier: other machine intelligences
Emotional Machines While they are not beings of pure logic, Experts cannot claim to have emotions. They do not get angry or resentful, they do not love, they do not show compassion: though they may appear to do so. There are, however, emotional machines. Some emotions come easier to machines than others (Fear, for instance)…
Questions about Frontier
Back in the day, Eamon, Colin and I did spend some time discussing the concepts a long time ago but it’s clear that we had divergent ideas. Some of these were because we knew too much (when you mix biologists and physicists and try to make a far-future sci-fi setting) and some of it was…
Citizen: a skill?
In our BRP-based Runequest game, Michael has asked a few times for rolls on ‘Gloranthan Lore’ and ‘Human Lore’ so that we can remember items from our own cultures. Because we’re all grotesque combat monsters (with the exception of Jim’s character), we’ve all spent maybe 10-20 points on these skills. Pretty feeble really but not…