We did it! We playtested By The Stars for the first time yesterday. My most heartfelt thanks to Kat, Bruce, Bill, Michele, Stefan, Don, and Jo for taking a chance, helping me out, and having a fun time in the process. Yes, that’s right. Not only did the playtest happen, and not only was it … Read more
My playtest is in six days and I’m not ready. It’s going to be extremely rough and my little panic-voice is screaming “Cancel the whole thing and take up something simple, like gardening or photography.” But I shall persevere. No matter how rough the game is this Sunday, WE WILL PLAYTEST. One of the bits … Read more
It’s Monday morning and I should be recovering from a too-full day of too-much gaming fun at NYC’s RECESS yesterday. Instead, I’m recovering from a nasty stomach flu that filched most of my weekend from me. I’m frustrated for not being able to go to RECESS, confer w/ the NYC nerds, actually play some games. … Read more
In the realm of concrete words-on-a-page progress, I’ve got only a handful of scribbled notes to report. I spent a decent bit of the weekend fretting, cying, bellyaching, and tearing my hair out over this latest creative drought. Just yesterday morning I was ready to hang the whole thing up again. Then I thought, to … Read more
The Good News: I finished the initial playtest draft of Serial. If you’d like a copy, e-mail me at thebard at incarnadine dot indie-rpgs dot com. The Bad News: I only had time for one project and Serial was it. The new character sheet and Dreamation AP will have to wait until next week. However, … Read more
I played the minis game Heroscape last night for the first time. It uses special attack and defense dice. Attack dice have 3 skull sides and 3 blank sides. Defense dice have 2 shield sides and 4 blank sides. Each shield counters one skull, with any skulls left becoming damage. I had 3 figs. Each … Read more
I was thinking about the “single-game engine that you can play any number of one-shot stories with” that I’ve wanted to design for a long time. Play Right!, my Game Chef entry, was a stab at it. I have numerous notes about it over the past 5 years. But, there’s a serious marketing problem with … Read more
Well, I had off an entire day off due to snow this week and still topped 49 hours at work. That, plus a slew of family obligations and working on the playtest draft of Serial, the game about serial killers that I’m helping Kat with (it’s about half done), have left me with no progress … Read more
I just finished 2 hours of snowblowing. It was our first real storm of the season and work was cancelled. That means, of course, that tomorrow will be extra hellacious with a side of torture, but that’s tomorrow. I’ve always liked the snow. I got in arguments in college because I refused to complain about … Read more
It’s been a nasty week at work, including half a day today (Sunday) and next week looks worse. But, I actually made some notes on the setting (yes, you read that right, I wrote setting-notes) of By The Stars. I was thinking about the rationale for and structure of an interstellar government. Combine it with … Read more