I’m going to be running some games at Dreamation in February, and I just got my schedule. Here it is:

• Saturday at 9am I’ll be running “The Dragon Slayer”, a playtest session of Becoming.
• Saturday at 8pm I’ll be running “Cynners and Saints”, a scenario for Jeremy Keller’s Technoir.
• Sunday at 10am I’ll be running “The Long Road Home”, a second playtest session of Becoming.

I hope to see you all there!

I got this image this morning from Christopher Barley, an amazingly talented illustrator and member of Meetup of Doom. I just wanted to share it with everyone because I had trouble peeling my lower jaw off the floor when I saw it this morning. This image exemplifies the mood of the game in a way that’s difficult to articulate. Kudos to Chris for capturing it so well.

I’m not going to be blacking out my site today. I’m not doing so because I don’t believe that doing so will make any kind of difference. This is not just because I have a small audience (though that’s certainly part of it). I think that sites like Wikipedia blacking out is a commendable sacrifice on their part but, ultimately, I don’t think it does anything either.

The reason for this is that I don’t believe the people with decision-making power care that this is happening, if they even notice at all. I understand that people want to do something about SOPA, but I’m not sure that blacking out your site is actually going to affect change, no matter how big your site is. And I’m certainly sure that changing your Facebook or Twitter avatar will not affect change.

So what am I doing? I’m going to voice my opinion. I won’t black out this site, but this will be the only post going up today. The point of this post is simple: SOPA is wrong. It’s an enormous overreaction to something that it doesn’t even have a prayer of stopping, and it’s likely that it’ll cause more problems than it fixes. If you’re so inclined, I’d encourage you to contact a representative of government and share your opinion with them.

A month or so ago I got the seed of an idea. That seed sat in my head, refusing to let me think about other things until I watered it, nurtured it, and let it start growing. I did so, and it’s growing into a game called Becoming.

Rather than simply explaining what Becoming is, I’ll let my pitch do the talking.

Becoming is a game about what you must sacrifice to be a hero. Taking on the mantle of the hero makes you an outcast. In order to save the things you love, you must lose them. When you complete your quest will you still be a hero? Or have you become something else?

Simply put, Becoming is a game about going on a heroic journey, but there’s a twist: the outcome of the journey is not in doubt. You will succeed in your quest. You will slay the dragon or find a new homeworld for Earth. What is in doubt is the price of your heroism: what will you have to give up? Will you still be the same person at the end of the quest? Will you be able to go home again?

The core of the game is all about making choices, about choosing what to give up and what to hold on to. There is dice rolling. There are conflict resolution mechaincs. But tied intrinsicly to these things is a system of bargaining and of sacrifice.

The game is still in its early stages. I don’t have a fully playtestable prototype yet, but I will. I’ve made it my goal to get this thing written and published this year. My intent is to document the design process to some extent. Because I’m very excited about it, you’ll likely hear more about it in the future.

The more I read indie RPGs, the more I want to read and play more indie RPGs. More than that, I want to share the awesome of indie RPGs with other people, people who don’t know that there are games other than D&D and Pathfinder out there.

To that end, I’m in the process of making arrangements with Rob, the proprietor of Family Fun Hobbies in Hamilton, NJ, to start up a monthly indie game day. The idea is that, once per month, I come into the store and run a different indie game with the intent of getting people excited about them and showing them what’s out there.

I already have a roster of games I want to run. I’ll probably start with Fiasco, and follow that up with Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Zombie Cinema. It should be fun; I can’t wait.

We had that meetup today, and it was a rousing success. We had a mixed group of game designers, podcasters, artists, and editors, and it was really interesting to get together and talk about the process of game design from all of these varying perspectives. There was a lot of general chatter at first, with topics ranging from what’s wrong with the current state of D&D, to how Paizo took everyone by surprise with Pathfinder, to how various board, card, and roleplaying games achieve their goals with varying levels of success.

We also discussed what we want out of this thing in the future. There was a general consensus that it should stay relatively casual; we want to hang out, talk, play games, eat snacks, and drink beer (well, Jenn and I drank beer; everyone else abstained). However, we also want this to be a resource for Philly area game designers, and we want to achieve that in a couple of different ways.

First, this is a good networking tool. It allows people connected to the industry in various ways to meet up with people connected in other ways, ways which may be valuable. Hopefully it’ll grow as it goes on, which will make this element of the meetup even more valuable.

Second, this is a great opportunity for game designers to playtest their games and get feedback from other people who are looking at the game with an eye toward analyzing it from a mechanical and thematic perspective. Jenn ran her game, Project Ninja Panda Taco, and not only was it great fun (seriously, back this game when it goes to Kickstarter), I think she got a lot of valuable feedback from the group there. She was presented with a group of people who were really enthusiastic about her game, and who wanted to make it as awesome as it can be, many of whom had experience designing games, themselves. Valuable stuff.

Third, something we want to do is play actual complete games–games that are currently for sale on the market–with an eye toward analysis. So maybe one day we sit down and play Settlers of Catan, or Nightfall, or Fiasco, and we talk about what works and doesn’t work, and what can be applied to other games.

All in all, very successful, and a lot of fun. There is an extremely high degree of likelihood that there will be another one in January, and a similarly high likelihood that there will be further meetups in the future. This is something we want to keep doing, and something we want to grow. As such, I hope you’ll join us in the future.

Wow, it’s been . . . a month or so since my last post? That’s not so good. I’m going to make an effort to start up again. The thing is, I have freelance writing and such that I’m working on, for pay and publication, and every time I sit down to blog, I think to myself, “I could be designing right now.” My own personal hangup, and probably not the best mindset, but there you go; I’ll try to get past it.

At any rate, I thought I’d go ahead and post my schedule for Metatopia, which I will be attending on the 4th, 5th, and 6th of November. For those who are unaware of what Metatopia is: it is a gaming convention with a primary focus on helping independent designers test their games and learn their craft. You can go if you just want to play games; that’s allowed, and helps those designers get their things tested. However, you can also sign up as a designer (which is a little more expensive), and schedule events for people to participate in. Pretty cool, right? I signed up as a player because none of the stuff I’m working on is really ready for prime time yet, but I’m going to be attending a lot of seminars to help me get better at what I do. Here’s the rundown:

Friday
Fortune Cookie Kung Fu – 8pm – 12am

Saturday
Self-Publishing – 10am – 11am
Wanderlust Focus Group – 12pm – 1pm
Game Design Roundtable – 3pm – 5pm
Independent Gaming Roundtable – 5pm – 7pm
Champion of the Realm – 8pm – 12am

Sunday
Game Mechanics: What Works, What Doesn’t? – 1pm-2pm

Note that, while I only have a single event scheduled for Friday and Sunday, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those will be the only times I’m there. Work is going to make it difficult to spend a lot of time at the convention on Friday, but I might use Sunday to meet up with other people at the convention. If you’re attending, feel free to send me a message on Twitter (@Zelgadas), or shoot me an email (engard at gmail dot com) if you want to meet up. If you’re not attending but want to, well you’ve basically got the rest of tonight and tomorrow (Halloween) to sign up. Best of luck.

Hope to see you there!

The Kickstarter for The Demolished Ones is now up! If you’re interested in seeing this Lovecraft-inspired dystopian steampunk mystery game/adventure come to fruition, please go and back it. Donate $10 and you’ll get a PDF and your name in the credits. At $40, you’ll get a copy of the book. At $75 you get to start having input into the development of the game. At $500+, I will personally run a game of The Demolished Ones for you at GenCon 2012. What are you waiting for? Get to it!

It’s been a little while since I posted, so I figured I’d do one of those “random things on my mind” posts.

The Demolished Ones is humming along nicely. We’ve got a Kickstarter going up on September 1st, so be sure to check that out; if you’re interested in the game, it could really use your support. In the mean time, if you’d like to learn about it, there’s a teaser page on Rite Publishing’s website. This features some basic information, some teaser text by yours truly, and some artwork by Hugo Solis and the final logo by Claudia Burgos. It’s all very cool.

Seeing this project develop has been kind of a surreal experience for me. I’ve been freelancing for a while, so I’ve gotten a little bit used to seeing my words in a finished product, but The Demolished Ones is the first project that I’ve had so much creative control over. I’m normally the guy writing the stuff that someone else wants me to write, but with this project, I’m choosing the direction the project goes in, I’m telling the artists what the art should look like, and so forth. It’s bizarre, but in a good way. I’m really excited about this project and I hope it gets green-lit so we can actually publish. I think it’s going to be a pretty awesome game.

On the electronic side of things, I’ve been playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution lately. I was a big fan of the first Deus Ex, and I even liked Deus Ex: Invisible War enough to play it all the way through (though I readily admit that it wasn’t as good as the first). Human Revolution feels very much like the first game, but so much of it is better from a mechanical standpoint. The stealth and gunplay is better, the augmentation system offers more freedom to customize your playstyle, the environments are more complex and convincing, and the hacking minigame blows the original Deus Ex’s hacking system out of the water.

My avatar in the game is a sneaky special ops type who kills when necessary, can cloak himself, and is great at hacking through obstacles. My friend Chris is playing the game non-lethally, and seems to be focusing more on augs that give him access to interesting locations. I like that there’s enough game there to support both of us. Highly recommended.

Finally, Bulldogs! is doing really, really well. It’s been in the top 15 on a number of sites where it’s sold since its release, and I’m hearing nothing but good things about it. Unfortunately, Hurricane Irene prevented me from running my planned demo of it this past Sunday, but I plan on rescheduling it. This is a game that I am really proud to be associated with; it does so many things well, and running it is a crazy amount of fun.

The soft launch page for The Demolished Ones, a Kickstarter-funded patronage project on which I am the lead designer, can be found here. The Kickstarter isn’t up yet; that’s due to go up on September 1st. I will let you know when it’s up, and where to go. In the mean time, go take a look and get your pledges ready!