[red game] Where did this end up?

[ndpaoletta]

Hey Ron!

At some point you were working on a game inspired by the color red. For some reason I was thinking about that today, and had some ideas about basing games off of colors. Anyhow, I'm curious as to how far you got on this, and what it looks like in its current state.

(ulterior motive: I've been thinking a lot about turning abstract ideas into grabby game pitches. Turning color into Color, if you will. Is this the kind of thing you'd be interested in talking about on these forums?)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Nathan,

I've continued to revise and occasionally playtest those three "religion" games. Of the on-line versions, only "Relic" has been textually revised, and the other two are still in their versions from about a year ago. As it happens, I'm just about to fix up the other two.

I haven't tried the red one yet (working titles, both too plagiarized to use, are Estimated Prophet or The Stress of Her Regard), but I know that Michele tried it at InterNosCon earlier this year. I haven't heard anything about how it went.

Turning color into Color was totally the plan for Ronnies, from the beginning. It's why I never got funky with mechanics parameters for any of the rounds, limiting it to words (and exclusion of the words not chosen). I'll probably never get around to it, but the terms for a planned Ronnies round back in 2005 were love, beauty, color, wonder, definitely the most abstract of any round I'd done. I'd altered them a bit for inclusion in 2011, obviously trading in red for color, and never did settle on the exact combination I would have done if life and fatigue hadn't ended the Ronnies that year. But red and beauty would have stayed in, and those are the ones I chose for that particular game design.

So yes, I'm totally interested in talking about it - My Stuff for my games, Your Stuff for anyone else's.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

That game was organized by Lorenzo Trenti at GnoccoCon 2011 (HERE is a picture of the sheets taken during the game). The other three players were Michele Gelli, Davide Losito e Alex I. As far as I know no actual play posting of the game ever appeared, but Davide at the time said that he was preparing one in English: Davide, do you still have your notes about the game?

[davide.losito]

GREAT GAME.
Mind-blowing.

The feeling I got was that the mind-blow I got as a player in realizing what the game was asking me and how to get it, coincided exactly with the in-story moment in which my character decided to dive into the red madness and abandon all hope of saving anything that was important before.

This game is probably - in my experience - what currently describes better the concept of reward cycle, in factual and practical terms.

So, I had this military man who was tied up in his values of discipline and loyalty, trying to find a balance between his nation, his career and his family.
Then suddenly the first visions of Red come in and in the first moments I was puzzling me about "what the hell do have I to do with all this?", so I decided I would try and fight against them and work on what I thought they were my "character priorities".
I don't remember exactly what triggered it all, probably the second paper page cut that ended up glued on the sheet.
I positioned the first one so to save what I cared most of the names and words wrote on the record sheet.
But the second... the second "told" me that my vision was that of a beautiful lady in red and I started playing so to gain those cuts I wanted in order to complete the picture of this lady and started to glue them in a way that could produce a gorgeous woman, completely ignoring what I was "deleting" from my character's life in this process.

This was mind-blowing.
I wanted that picture, I wanted that lady. I dived into Red.

[Ron Edwards]

Oh. I was expecting a disaster ... Thank you to everyone!

Well, shoot, I guess I ought to play-test this.

Davide, do you remember what happened to your character? Did you play long enough to arrive at one of the three ways to end?

Best, Ron

[davide.losito]

We didn't actually get the game done to the ends, but my character was running into disappearing in red. I don't remember the name of the three ends, but it was the one in which the character is gone for good.

[Ron Edwards]

Revised version's available; the link at my website goes to it now. Here's the direct link.

Editing this in: all three game drafts are now updated.

Best, Ron