The Ronnies, September 2005

[talysman]

ok, I'm back. it's been a while, but I had a heck of a lot happen to keep me busy... I made a promise I wouldn't post to the Forge until I had written another game and playtested one of my previous ones. but I have still been lurking when I had the time, and noticed this 24-hour challenge, and decided to give it a try. this counts as "writing another game", and I have a playtest for Co9C I will write up a bit later.

I'm not sure if "Darling Grove" is available on the 24-Hour RPG site yet; it uses "suburb" and "girlfriend". I actually started another game called "Meet the Neighbors", using "suburb" and "hatred", but ran out of time; I kept making illustrations, fussing with formats, and thinking up alternative cases to the rules and didn't concentrate on writing down all the core play features. it's actually about 80-90% finished and I may polish it up a tiny bit and post it just for fun.

a friend suggested I should have written a "suburb/hatred" game about Robert Mosley destroying your neighborhood, and I considered it, even worked out a few basics, but it really didn't sound interesting.

now, to rest...

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Well the most important question is, Ron, did you enjoy the whole process?  What parts gave you the most/least amounts of joy?

Peace,

-Troy

[Ron Edwards]

I appreciate that question.

I greatly enjoyed the back-to-basics process of the contest, which is why I started it in the first place. The Forge simply needs more games, more playtesting, and more applications of ideas without getting wrapped up in ego-driven and confusion-mongering debate. These were games; I got to read them and in many cases, became excited about potentially playing them. The original Forge was dedicated to finding and helping nascent game authors, and I consider this contest to be getting back to those goals.

I also enjoyed the interplay of the chosen concepts across all the games, which is something I'd hoped for. As a pattern-finder, I liked seeing how the interpretations of, for instance, "girlfriend" varied and formed new combinations with the other terms. Since these "clusters" of ideas also fueled resolution and reward systems, I now have a bunch of games that make sense to me in terms of why to play them. It's like a great big birthday present from the community.

There are some downsides, which I think will always arise out of the whole concept of "winners" and so on. We'll see whether the upcoming discussions will be constructive. I'm not really looking forward to ego-clashes and resentments.

Best,
Ron