[Forge Midwest] Official Thread, Part 2 of 2

[Eric J.]

Hello!  It's been 1.5 years in the making.  Living Alchemy is a crunchy system about playing an adventuring scientist driven to accomplish something at any cost.

This is a protoguide.  It is the first draft of the game and probably entails a lot of confusion. It has several in-your-face editing mistakes.  I'll get around to fixing them next weekend but I also would like to get some reactions from the work as a whole as well.  If any one would play test it, I'd be very happy.

www.wingsoftime.net/downloads/living_alchemy.zip

May the wind be always at your back,
-Eric

[GB Steve]

Shooting the Moon has been given the game of the month award for April by the French gaming portal roliste.com.

In particular they say:

In the great tradition of the "indie" games having been born on The Forges, the game mechanic is original and emphasizes the theme. On the one hand, there is no group of characters but three characters in conflict. On the other, there is no GM: the story is built jointly by the players. When one lover acts, his of her rival can create obstacles to be confronted, mountains to be moved and the moons shot at. With short games, this little game for three goes down as yet unexplored routes for roleplaying games while at the same time these stories of impossible love are at the basis of hundreds of novels. It was about time!

Kudos!

[David Artman]

Hi, all;

This one's for the POD publishers and ethics pundits in general....

I am hoping to release the full GLASS rules via POD ("shot GLASS" will be a rule-only player book that's a free PDF).

I am considering one of the following pricing strategies, to encourage game stores to buy books to resell them:
* Set the POD price at ~20% less than the MSRP printed on the book (and in the bar code, if I include one)--"wholesale via POD".
* Offer a POD price for 5 or more that is ~20% less than the single copy POD price--"bulk discount via POD".

My questions are, basically:
1) Are either of those option even possible with POD providers; will they do it?
2) Is there any ethical issue with either method (really more concerned about the first one; bulk discounts are fairly common and accepted).

Thanks;
David

[GreatWolf]

I got to playtest Dirty Secrets at Forge Midwest on Saturday.  My partners in crime were Paul Czege, Matt Wilson, John Stavropoulos, and Tod Olson.  (If I got your name wrong, please correct me.)  We ran a small Grid, which took about 90 minutes to play.

I'd love to give a detailed account of the story that we created but, between a bit of fatigue on my part and, honestly, the convoluted events that occurred, I'm not sure that I could remember all the bits fitting into each other.  We ended up with a retired pediatrician who was still doing some fertility treatments on the sly, working with a DEA agent who was moonlighting as a photographer for blackmail purposes or somesuch thing.  Along the way, this agent photographed Samantha York with Mr. Lena, husband of the client that brought our intrepid investigator into the case.  Of course, since the agent was only photographing clients of this fertility doctor, that meant that Samantha was actually trying to get pregnant by Mr. Lena.  Mrs. Lena was blackmailing Samantha, probably with these photographs (we forgot to establish how this played out), so Samantha murdered the agent to stop the photographs from being taken.

Honestly, it made sense at the time.  Well, somewhat.  There were a lot of details flying around.

THINGS I LEARNED

First, I want to thank my fellow players.  The experience of teaching the game was quite helpful to me, especially in figuring out how to run an effective demo of Dirty Secrets.  For example, in the future, I'll probably not play in the game and act as a tutor and facilitator for the game.  Also, I'll probably poll the table to determine experience with the genre and give the role of investigator player to one of those folks.  Tod did a fine job as investigator, but I could tell that he was feeling the pressure to perform within a genre that he didn't know well.  If I had made Matt the investigator, he might have been more comfortable, given his greater familiarity with the genre.

I also learned the necessity of communicating the ability for the entire group to participate in any given sequence.  This is a problem with any "round robin" style of game, as Paul pointed out, and, although the rules explicitly state that anyone may say anything, this isn't necessarily something that a given group of players will pick up on.  I think that a demo facilitator would have to do almost GM duty, looking for the signs of someone desiring to interject something and coaxing it forth.  Also, in a discussion with my gaming group at home, Crystal suggested adding a term:  Adviser.  So now, in a given Chapter, there's an Authority, an Investigator, and some Advisers.  In that way, the game reminds the players that they should feel free to advise the Authority and Investigator.  I think that this is a good change.

I also discovered the real power of shared geography as a shared communication tool.  Since our play group was from all over the place, we set our story in New York City, given that we had a New Yorker with us.  However, this meant that we were not able to exercise the ability to establish scene locations effectively.  After all, I don't know New York, beyond the existence of multiple boroughs.  I found this lack to have hurt us somewhat, which was a bit surprising to me.  I had thought that the setting of "your town, last week" was a nifty bonus to the game, but I'm coming to see that it actually allows for more powerful play.  Weird, but true.


RULES CHANGES AND TWEAKS
As a result of this game, I'm tweaking the number of Characters in a given game.  Because we had five players, we used up our allotment of Character cards during setup.  I think that this hurt the game, because there was no room to expand the web of characters during play.  Under the new rules, we would have had two extra Characters to work with, which would have been a good thing.

Also, I think that Research needs just a little bit of massaging.  The concept works great, but those "sexual/romantic" relationships still keep complicating things for me.

Finally, I got a bunch of good feedback from the playtesters.  Hopefully I didn't come off as too defensive as we were discussing the issues.  However, even some of the suggestions that I rejected were helpful, since they reflected previous stages in my design of the game.  Often I could say, "Yes, I had thought about that but it won't work for this reason."  I found it to be somewhat validating.

There were also the name suggestions for the Crime Grid counter.  Right now, the Witness is where I'm leaning, but the Observer also has possibilities.

Also, someone (either John or Paul) noted that it would be an easy matter to introduce handicapping for players into the game, simply by adjusting how many dice each player receives.  This is an excellent idea that I intend to explore further.

And, finally, John offered to do a blind playtest with his group, which I really appreciated.

So, in all, I thought that it was a successful playtest.  I enjoyed myself and I think that the game will be stronger because of it.

Thanks, guys!

[MatrixGamer]

I've just had a Matrix Gamer in England join my yahoo MG group who has been playing MGs since the late 90's. He came across the rules that were posted around 1992 on a web page called "Giants of the Deep". That page used the rules I had put out earlier that year. So there was a 5 year delay between posting and his picking it up and then a 10 year lag between his starting to play and finding me (the author of the rules). I sent him out copies of the present rules and invited him to join into our on line games.

Here is what he wrote:

"Thanks for the email,  At the moment I'm just content on mooching about and
picking up whatever is new (to me at least ) in the world of matrix gaming.
I came across an early set of your rules (this would be around the late 90's I
think) and used those rules along with some modifications I came across on a
site which I can no longer find (It was a mythical world creation called
giants in the deep!) with some friends for a strategic wargame campaign based
on a mythical world built (if that's the right word) from the rules.  We did
that off and on for a few years until for job reasons we moved apart to
different parts of the UK.  After that I didn't have anyone to share in the
gaming experience until now.  I came upon it by accident even though I had
searched for 'matrix' on Yahoo groups (You'd be amazed just what gets thrown
up when you do that!).  So I've finally found the place I'm looking for and
would love to get involved again especially with a fresh bunch of likeminded
souls." 



All in all a very cool contact. Sometimes bread crumbs on the water do come back.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[Jarx]

Im working currently on a roleplay inspired by books such as the iliad, paradise lost and book of revelations.
It uses a system I call the Demon 4 system, it uses the D4s in a dicepool way, more than that can't say.
The world is called Sirethaír, and is ruled by an alliance of empires and kingdoms, all intriguing against each other.
As Fatum is latin for doom, it's prety obvious that the sorta "overplot" will eventually lead to the downfall of the world.
If someone has suggestions to additions to my RPG, please be kind and tell them. If I use one your ideas, later on I thank you with all my heart.

[Jarx]

Im working currently on a roleplay inspired by books such as the iliad, paradise lost and book of revelations.
It uses a system I call the Demon 4 system, it uses the D4s in a dicepool way, more than that can't say.
The world is called Sirethaír, and is ruled by an alliance of empires and kingdoms, all intriguing against each other.
As Fatum is latin for doom, it's prety obvious that the sorta "overplot" will eventually lead to the downfall of the world.
If someone has suggestions to additions to my RPG, please be kind and tell them. If I use one your ideas, later on I thank you with all my heart.

[Jarx]

Im working currently on a roleplay inspired by books such as the iliad, paradise lost and book of revelations.
It uses a system I call the Demon 4 system, it uses the D4s in a dicepool way, more than that can't say.
The world is called Sirethaír, and is ruled by an alliance of empires and kingdoms, all intriguing against each other.
As Fatum is latin for doom, it's prety obvious that the sorta "overplot" will eventually lead to the downfall of the world.
If someone has suggestions to additions to my RPG, please be kind and tell them. If I use one your ideas, later on I thank you with all my heart.

[Matt Wilson]

So in the GAMA thread, Ben was talking about needing to raise his prices to accomodate retail rates, and it set me down a whole line of thinking.

First I thought, Dude, why are you paying $11/copy to get Polaris printed? It would cost less at Kinkos.

Then I thought back to Gen Con 2005, when I had my revised version of Primetime Adventures done, and Luke was giving me the big-print sales pitch. I remember being terrified of the idea. Maybe of Luke, too. He gets going with gestures and stuff.

But long since I've done me a big print run, and I can't recommend it enough. It more than halved my original cost per book, and it resulted in a really nice, quality book. Thanks Luke! Now Ben may have many reasons why he doesn't do a run of a thousand, but he's a great example of a publisher who could (and ought to, man, seriously). And I've been thinking about big runs in terms of a benchmark.

The thing about POD printers, and especially ones like Lulu, is that you can fix all kinds of errors and make revisions and it's all seamless. Click, and the updated version is good to go. But why is a product that's potentially full of errors available for sale in the first place? If you don't know what might be wrong with it, why are you hawking it as a complete and finished game? I ask the me of 2004 that same question, don't doubt it.

A run of a thousand copies (plus sweet, sweet overruns) cost me just over $2000, including shipping to my house. And that was roughly half up front, half prior to shipment. That's for a 112 page digest size game. Do the math in your heads accordingly and imagine how much your game might cost. Then think about how much more you'd make per book. Then make sure the reason you aren't doing it is a lack of confidence in the product.

This site in part is set up to discourage would-be publishers from printing ginormous runs of books, then getting stuck with a basement full of them; however, I'm proposing that a not-so-ginormous run be an excellent goal to strive for. Consider your finished game to be something that you'd confidently print a thousand of (plus sweet, sweet overruns).

Not to knock the Lulu stage* by any means. POD printers like Lulu are also an awesome resource, maybe a crucial one. I'll leave that for another thread.

And Ben, by the white suit of Ackbar, get those per-book costs down! Down I say!

* I will, however, knock the people who work for Lulu. One of them didn't show up for FM, and I have now made him my sworn enemy. Sworn! The deadly past participle of swearing!

[gds]

Hi All,

So I've been reading a few of the other threads, and been noting the comments about playtesting of Indie games prior to release (i.e. prior to selling - people handing over cash for your work). I have posted this as a separate thread so as not to derail others - please merge it Ron if you think it ties in with an existing thread. Also I might have posted it in the wrong place - apologies!

So with playtesting I think there is a fundamental problem that we, as indie game designers, have. It's all to do with Investment and Payback. Let me explain. Investment - every time someone playtests your fledgeling creation, they are investing time and effort. Payback - as a result of your playtesting, they get something in return, either something physical or perhaps something more ephemeral. Let's look at some examples in the creative industries.

Film making - OK, I've made my film. I've paid for the script, hired the actors, filmed the scenes and done the scoring, and I have edited the film into near completeness. Is it any good though? Time for a test screening. I get some viewers in, and they watch my film. Investment for the viewers - a few hours of their lives, and no doubt a detailed questionaire to fill in. Payback - a free film, the chance to see something cool before anyone else does, the chance to suggest what would make the film better. Investment - small, Payback - large. Result - no problem getting viewers.

Writing the core book to WHFRP2 - Ok, I'm Black Industries and I'm going to redo WHFRP for the current gaming generation. I've thrashed out the rules, got the game written, got some art and tested in house - in short I can afford to splash some cash. I'm now after outside gaming groups to playtest for me. Investment - they have to read the book, no doubt play several game sessions, and give me detailed reports of how the game went. The major investment is in gaming time, many folks only get one game a week, and I'm asking them to throw their current favorite game out the window and try my unpolished piece. Payback - they know that the book will be made no matter what (I'm a company and I've invested money) and that their names will be in the front, so they know they'll get to be a part of a great new game based on one which in this case they have probably played and loved in it's first incarnation, and most importantly they get to have a say in the recreation of their beloved game. Investment - large, Payback (to gaming geeks like us) - large. Result - several hundred (I think) playtesters listed at the front of the book.

Now for the real issue...

I'm writing my game, 'Killer monkeymen from Lost Atlantis'. It's gonna be great! I've written the rules and the background, maybe got some friends to take a look. There's no art (unless I can draw/have a friend willing to), and it's all in a word-style pdf. In short, I've invested the minimum to create my game, and probably no cash at all. Now I need playtesters outside of my group of friends. Investment - they have to read the book, hopefully play several game sessions, and give me some kind of report on how the game went. Again the major investment is in gaming time. Payback - well, if it's good, and I have the time, and I have the money, and I can be arsed, it might get published as a book and I'll stick their names in the front. I might even be able to pay for some art and layout so it looks good. Or it might languish for a few years as I fiddle with it, eventually to come out as a freebie on my website with their name in it. Or I might get a new job or get married or get posted somewhere, and it'll rot on my PC. Investment - large. Payback - very, very variable, potentially large, more likely small to zero.

And that's the big problem. Why should anyone consider playtesting my game? What, really is in it for them? The Investment/Payback balance is shifted massively toward Investment, and I'm basically asking them to do a load of work for me for potentially no benefit. I think this is why most games that do get playtested do so either because the designer took it to loads of Cons (and are Con games really good playtests?), the designer is well-known and thought of as cool, or the designed gave it to one of his designer buddies  in exchange for playtesting their latest creation. Well-known designers can run their indie operation like a company - they can pay for some art or get some done on the back of their  prior success. Not so the newbie.

At the end of the day, we, as designers, are trying to sell something when we ask for playtests. The something? A game, and idea, that might, just might, be really cool. The cost? Money (if we eventually publish the game), but most importantly in playtesting, that rarest commodity of all, playing time. If we want to change the balance and get more games thoroughly playtested, then we need to increase the payback. So now I've ranted, how about some ideas. Well here's one.

A playtest community - using a medium like the forge (I'm not suggesting that you should do this Ron), designers set up a bit of a collective. Designers submit their new games and the community give it an internal review, privately, to see whether the group thinks the game has something in it. If they don't, it goes back for a rehash or gets rejected. If they do, it gets the community seal of approval and gets offered up as a Playtest game for anyone external to the community who wants to look at it. The Investment is still their, but with an organised upper tier to the playtest, external groups at least recognise that the game has somehting about it and a chance or going somewhere, so the Payback is higher than is the norm at the moment. Of course that's just an idea, and there's a lot wrong with private peer reviews by a select (selected how?) elite few. Ok bad idea - anyone got a better one?

Cheers,

EvilD