The book
44 is 37 pages in the usual 6×9 format. The text is formated in a single column, but very heavy with rules terms, it took longer than expected to get through. There are a few small pictures in the margins.

The setting
The game’s setting is the US in the fifties, and one by one Section 44 is replacing the people with robot replicas. The PCs stumble across the truth and are targeted for replacement, and the game takes it’s beginning.

The rules
The rules are focused on tracking the struggle between the PCs (trying to survive) and the Director (trying to replace the PCs with robots). PCs have dice pools for Resolve, Contact and Material, and roll them against the Director’s pools to resolve conflicts. The system covers allies and friends, called Bonds, that the PCs can draw help from in the form of bonus dice. But doing so exposes them to danger, and they risk being converted to robots in service of the Director. Everything is geared towards promoting paranoia and fear.

The form
The game has a GM (The Director) to play the opposition to the PCs. Play goes through a fixed number of scenes during which the PCs try to avoid being replaced by robots. Any players who fail, proceed to play their robotic counterpart and work on the GM’s side to convert the remaining PCs. Any PCs that remain human at the end of the game have won.

Conclusion
The setting is weak, besides the basic premise of a shady conspiracy that replace people with robots in the fifties there isn’t much setting in the game. However, if the players are willing to fill in the gaps along the way, it shouldn’t be a problem.
The rules are good, are focused and seem to model the PCs’ struggle well.
The form is good. Clear instructions are given to both the GM and the players. The GM is even given a ‘character sheet’ of his own to track his resources during play.

Will I play it?
Maybe. I think that the general paranoia feel of the game is awesome, and I’m a fan of similar fiction with movies such as The Faculty and The Invasion, and the brilliant Iron Empires comics.

On the other hand I wonder how relevant the GM really is to the game, at first glance it looks like we have a Vestigal GM on our hands. I.e. 44 might be a game where so much of the GM’s role has been automated and handed out to the other players, that it might as well be played as a GM-less game. Only very small adjustments are needed to play the game in the style of Polaris, with the GM’s tasks rotating among the players.

–

storiesyouplay.com/44/ – The official 44 page

And now Christmas Eve is here, and Epiclaus has delivered the gaming gifts. I hope you’ll have a good time playing your new games with friends and family.

Epidiah and Emily are celebrating Epimas, and we’re invited. It’s all about gaming and giving games on the day before Christmas, which for them means Dec 24. Over here Santa come with presents a day earlier, on Christmas Eve, still a good day to give and get games.

Presently there are ten different PDF games listed on the site that you can buy for just $2.22 each. When you buy a gift for a friend, you get a free copy for yourself as well. If you order in time, the game will be sent out on Dec 24.

For the occasion I have created a special Revised edition of my game While the World Ends. It’s still the same game, but I have worked some of the rules tweaks that I have mentioned here on the blog into the text, so that everything will be in one place. The game has also been reformatted into US-Letter for easier printing. If you already have the game, there’s no real need to upgrade, but maybe it’s time to share it with a friend as an Epimas present?

I ended up buying an M-Audio Fast Track Pro, which should work in Linux, both with custom drivers in Debian, and as a plain old USB-audio device under any OS.

However, it didn’t work that well with my Ubuntu 11.11 machine. Actually,it didn’t work at all at first. It took a lot of trial’n'error and searching the interwebs for me to figure out how to get it running.

Techno mumble follows…

In the end I managed to get the board running with the following command line start of jackd.

jackd -v -R -d alsa -C hw:0,1 -P hw:0,0 -H -s -r44100


Note that I use different subdevices for input and output (this should be configurable within QJackCtl, but it seemed to me like the settings never really propagated from the GUI to jackd. I found that some audio applications didn’t work with any other sound card than the first one (the 0 card), so I hacked /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf to allow snd-usb-audio to take the position as the first sound card.

I did a proof of concept recording this evening. It’s mostly random key mashing over an arpeggiator track, and all tracks but one were done on the Yamaha CS1x. The last one is the viola da gamba (the drone track in the back of the mix).

Download: No bubbles here.mp3

The book
The game comes in a 36 page PDF, formatted to be printed into a small booklet. The text is single column and easy to read, the wording is poetic at times. Almost half the book consists of handouts to be cut out before play, so it is a very quick read.

The setting
The game’s intro reads as follows:

Four suburban teenagers encounter the mystery that
will shape their lives. They explore, and each time they
touch, we players exchange cards. For them a few days,
for us a few hours. We make up a story together, our
invented truths springing from the cards we hold; and
they step into the unknown, pausing at every awkward
touch, hopeful despite everything to come.

The game is about four teenagers who stumble across a dead man and a mystery, and the relationships between them.

The rules
The game comes with four semi-pre gen characters, the players pick one and make some minor tweaks to it before going into play. There are no rules for task or conflict resolution, only a card driven mechanic for directing the interactions between the characters.

The form
The game is GM less, and steps have been taken to make it as facilitator less as possible. The players read the rules together as part of the shared prep before the session. Every player controls an aspect of the setting, and as the cards trade hands during the interactions between the characters, that control also shifts among the players.

Conclusion
The setting is good, there isn’t much setting material in the game, but what there is is very evocative. The players will do a lot of filling in the blanks during play.
The rules are OK, I think. Trading cards during the character interactions, possibly trying to get a card with a good epilogue on it, feels a bit contrived. But there could be an emergent quality to the mechanism that I fail to see just in the read through.
The form is excellent, the game demonstrates excellent pedagogy of play. The GM/facilitator less setup makes me think I could put this on a table, and then send in a group of players to experience the game by themselves with only the briefest of introductions.

Will I play it?
Yes. The fixed requirement of four players may mean that it will take a while before I get a good opportunity to do so, but this is presently the number one game on my to-play list. I sense that the game would benefit from a translation into Swedish before play, to remove the distractions of constant translations, but it should be playable in the original English.

–

photographsoflightning.wordpress.com/silver-and-white – The official site, where the game can be downloaded.

The book
My copy is a 42 page PDF, I think it is supposed to be a 9×6 book, or maybe slightly smaller. There is some nice cartoon style artwork by Barry Deutsch. The text is laid out in a single readable column, but something about the editing confused me, and I had to read through the game twice in order to get it. Since it’s a rather short game that wasn’t a big issue.

The setting
The game has no setting as such, but it is always a story about two people going on three dates. There is a section in the book with suggestions for how to decide on a setting before playing.

The rules
The rules in Breaking the Ice are tightly focused on the growing attraction between the lovers. By rolling and re-rolling pools of D6s the players learn how the dates are going, and how the lovers find common interests that will strengthen the bond between them. Character generation involves collaborative mind map drawing starting with the character’s favorite color in the center, and then playing a game of word association from there to find the character’s traits.

The form
The game is one of the rare two player games. The players take turns being the active player and the story guide, however both roles involve mostly stuff usually associated with GM’ing. Not quite a player less game, but almost. The many examples in the game show play as being done in third person, in a rather abstract birds eye view of the story. In the end the players answer three questions about the dates and decide if the relationship grew into something steady.

Conclusion
The setting is OK, there’s not much there but the game gives enough information to guide the players while they decide on a setting of their own.
The rules are good, very focused on the subject of simulating dating.
The form is good, there are clear instructions in the game for what what the players should do at all stages. There’s a section on sex in games, good reading for players previously unfamiliar with lines and veils.

Will I play it?
Maybe. It’s a two player game, I only have few of those. I think one could vary the style of play in accordance with how familiar the two players are, allowing for more intimate story telling with close friends, to backing off a bit and playing it with more distance for playing with strangers at cons. I see the potential for both comedies and great drama in the game, depending on what setting is chosen.

–

www.blackgreengames.com/bti.html – The official site for the game.

A few days ago the answer to the mystery of the strange emails revealed itself in the form of yet another email – this time with a download link to John’s latest game, The Aegis Project, which I had apparently sponsored and then promptly forgotten all about.

The book
The game is 177 pages. Single column text in a very readable layout makes it a nice read, the first read through took me about two hours. There’s b/w interior art by Mauro Mussi, mostly showing mechs and posing people. I caught a few typos in the text, and a few rules that could have been more clearly written, but the total impression is still solid.

The setting
The setting in The Aegis Project is realistic sci-fi, or at least plausible to some extent. Mankind has reached the stars through FTL travel and established hundreds of colonies. One day aliens attack by sending an army of robots. The game is about the soldiers that face that threat, the soldiers can have access to mecha. There’s also two more settings in the game that pick up the ball and proceed with a civil war a few hundred years later, and even later another war with another inhuman enemy.

The rules
The rules cover template based character generation, task resolution (where you roll for narration privileges rather than success), and a rather abstract and narrative combat system. The main feature of the game, The Camaraderie mechanic which constitutes of a shared pool of bonus dice that any player can take from, and contribute to, arbitrarily. There’s neat stuff happening in at the table as players interact with the pool, even abusing or abstaining from using it tells the other players something about the character.

The game includes a brilliant method of adventure design, the GM states the overall goal of the adventure. Then the players take turns adding a few complications and intel before the adventure as such starts. No prep for the GM, and still a rather traditional form of adventuring in actual play!

The form
The game uses the traditional GM+players setup, but some interesting things happen in char gen. A player can chose to play a whole squad of soldiers instead of a single PC. A brilliant move to flesh out a squad of PCs without resorting to NPCs.

Players roll for narrative privileges in non combat situations, but in combat it reverts to the traditional pass/fail interpretation of dice rolls. This gives the game breadth of styles, covering both the traditional way of the GM interpreting the die results to produce a sense of chaos in combat, and a more story gaming kind of play in non combat situations.

Conclusion
The setting is ok, it tells us a lot on the grand scale, but little about the details. Expect to fill in a lot of blanks when playing.
The rules are good, they cover the needed ground and the Camaraderie mechanic puts some mechanical focus on playing a group of soldiers.
The form is very good, clear explanations of how the game should be played, including a few short bits of examples from play. There is also a bit on how to tie the three settings into a long continuous campaign of over 15 sessions.

Will I play it?
There is enthusiasm in the text, and right after I had read it I was ready to start a game right away. But after some deliberation I’m not certain. I want to see the game in actual play, and I’d rather run than be a player. But I think it might be a bit too focused on the soldiering at the expense of lack of coverage for what happens out of the combat zone for my tastes.

I find it more interesting (although not as pretty as) CthulhuTech, a somewhat similar in scope and idea. But that game also put a very strong focus on the fighty bits, ignoring the rich “civilian” setting it sported in the background material.

There is nothing in the game about the space travel, people do their fighting in the mud on far away worlds. There is definitely room for a supplement here, something along the lines of a Wing Commander RPG.

–

housesoftheblooded.net/jwpcom/?cat=96 – The project blog for The Aegis Project

• A Taste for Murder – 4 times
• Zombie Cinema – 4 times
• Lady Blackbird – 3 times
• Mist of Life – 3 times
• Panty Explosion Perfect – 2 times
• Den yttersta domen – 2 times
• Snakes on a Plane – 2 times
• The Daughters of Verona – 1 time
• Witch Quest – 1 time
• Fiasco – 1 time
• Annalise – 1 time
• Trollbabe – 1 time
• In a Wicked Age – 1 time

I ran six games, went to the sauna, had the traditional IGL sausage Stroganoff supper, dodged the TV team and had a good time in general hanging out with the other hosts of the IGL.

Zombie Cinema players

We have been thinking of retiring Zombie Cinema from the IGL, after all – the event is about demoing new cool games. But still we bring it with us every year. It’s an awesome game, it’s easy to teach, and pretty much everyone has some form of prior knowledge of the ‘setting’. At one time, when we were choked with players we just handed a group ZC and told them to have fun. They came back four hours later with the game, cheering and laughing, they’d had a blast. So I think we’ll have to keep it on the menu for another few years. It’s also a good game for new hosts to run, since it’s so easy.

The game I played was set at a wizard school, somewhere halfway between Hogwarts and Brakebills College. It was great fun and reminded me to get back to writing The Academy.

I ran a game of The Daughters of Verona. Two of the players were SCA enthusiasts and one was a student of theater and script writing. That definitely was no disadvantage in having a good time with the game, but it was nice to see that enthusiasts of the genre could enjoy the game as well. One of the players even posted a short AP after the game.

Right before packing up I ran a quick game of Witch Quest. Since there were an odd number of players I let one of the witches have twin cats who shared all pools. It worked very well, and I’ll keep that technique in mind for future games.

Witch Quest players

We drew our own character sheets and translated the circles on the spot. And now that I have played four games I thought I’d return to the game with a Playing post to make a report on how the game works in actual play.

When I wrote Playing posts for Zombie Cinema and Montsegur 1244 I had a lot to say, and some advice on how to play the game to share. But this time I don’t have much of either to offer.

Playing A Taste for Murder

When having four players it fits comfortably into a four hour slot. At five and six it might feel a bit rushed, at least at when going into some detail in the side scenes. That said I think the sweet spot is five players. With six there’s a little too much down time, and at four play feels a bit constricted in act two when one player moves on to playing Chapel.

It would have been nice if all the tables (weather, activities and rooms) were on the same spread, as it is every group scene is preceded by frantic page turning, but that is a minor problem.

I have seen the game go some pretty dark places, quite possibly due to the preferences of the groups I have played with. And while we’ve never seen darkness at Montsegur 1244 levels, I still think I’ll make a mention of it while pitching the game at cons, so the players can make an informed choice of whether to pick another game instead.

We have drifted the game a bit. In the denoument scene at the end of the game, it usually turns into a shouting match between the prime suspects, rather them taking turns making their respective defenses. It has worked out well enough, and I see no reason to enforce the sequential way suggested in the rules.

In conclusion it is a nice game that captures the murder drama genre very well, even if it never becomes much of a mystery since no one is really looking for clues and there’s no real investigation in the game.

Part of an illustration by Daniele Poma for The Academy

Now it is merely up to me to assemble it all into a game. But like our heroine on the left, I’m not quite ready yet. I’m still not done with revising the rules, and then there’s the whole matter of actually writing the game. And doing layout, proof reading, finding an editor and printing and dozens of other little things that are needed to make an idea – even one that has been subjected to playtests for several years – into a complete RPG to put on the shelves.

The Isabella card

I have been distracted from my work with The Academy, I took part in Game Chef 2011, and competed with a game called The Daughters of Verona. We have played it and I must say it captures the feeling of a Shakespearean comedy very well, and it’s fun game too.

I have also been hacking While the World Ends into a game about courtiers in the palace of the Mad Sultan, and there are more hacks on the way. But I’m shifting my design focus back to The Academy for now, when I still have the buzz from the pretty pictures.

After I posted this I had a discussion with Jonathan in the comments, if you are interested in Muse, go check them out as well.

/W

There’s a thread over on Story Games where Jonathan Benn discusses why he almost got out of the hobby in 2006, and talks about the game he wrote when he addressed those reasons.

I can sympathize. A few years earlier I had left my gaming group behind out of similar frustrations, and started my work with Höstdimma (18th century postapoc game, not available in English. If you read Swedish you can get it through my Lulu store.) From the thread we learn that Jonathan developed his game in isolation from the rest of the story game community. I wonder how his game turned out.

Muse

The setting
Muse is a universal system, and has no setting. There are guidelines for developing a setting as part of play.

The rules
There are no mechanics at the character level, no conflict or task resolution. But there’s a card (ordinary 52 card deck) driven bidding mechanic that is used to resolve conflicts between the participants, and to answer questions asked during setup (“Will the prince rescue the princess from the dragon?”). There are strict rules governing the rotation of narrations privileges.

The form
Muse is mostly about form, and takes the unusual step of removing the player role entirely. All the participants are GMs, and take turns telling bits of the story, using a shared gallery of NPC like characters. All narration is done in the present tense, in third person.

Conclusion
There is no setting at all.
The rules are OK, the card driven mechanic seems a bit convoluted, but there should be some depth and possibility for employing tactics while playing.
The form is excellent, there are lots of very clear examples for how the game should be played.

Will I play it?
No, I don’t think so. The game is a very good wheel, but it’s still a wheel. I wonder if Jonathan would have written it at all if someone had shown him Univesalis (by Ralph Mazza and Mike Holmes), which does mostly the same thing but with dice instead of cards; and it has retained PCs, even if they rotate among the players. Still, the game is free. I might recommend it to someone who wants a game of storytelling that still feels like a proper, winnable, game.

Removing both PCs and players is a bold move. While there is no doubt that Muse is a storytelling game, I’m not sure I would call it a role playing game. There is no first person play left at all.

–

www.benn.ca/muse – The official Muse web page.

ramshead.indie-rpgs.com – The official Universalis web page.