New 24-Hour Games

[philreed]

With vs. Monsters Deluxe finished I'm ready to try another 24-hour game. Anyone else up for doing some of these over one weekend in July?

[Jeph]

Sure thing. What happened to that Yahoo group with last year's games on it? It still around?

--Jeff

[pigames]

I'd love to give that a try! I'm sure I can pick an idea out of my head for that.

[anonymouse]

Certainly down with this. The trick is for this reply to be some kind of auto-pilot so I don't immediately start thinking of ideas.. which I will then have to discard to comply with the rules. ;)

[Crackerjacker]

I'll do it.

But which weekend of July?

[ethan_greer]

I'll make no commitments because I really can't - things are too up in the air with real life at the moment... But if I can be involved, I definitely will be.

[ADGBoss]

Yeah I would be down with that.


Sean

[ethan_greer]

Hey Phil,
Just to avoid this becoming a chorus of "present and accounted for," can you give us a run-down of the rules for 24-hour games so those on the fence can make a more informed decision?

Also, I encourage you not to try to set a date based on group consensus. That way lies madness. :) Just pick a weekend and go for it.

[anonymouse]

For the curious, this is the original thread from last year.

In summary:

You've got 24 hours to design a complete game. You cannot use any system/design stuff you've come up with before, ever; we start the clock, you start wracking your brain for a game idea, and then try and get it done. "Complete" is determined solely by each individual designer and their personal standards.

..and that's it. Unless I forgot something...

[Eero Tuovinen]

Let me tell you what personally bothers me in this challenge: nobody seems to acknowledge the difference between going into it with a readymade inspiration as opposed to a complete blank. I find the former almost trivial (I frequently write a first draft of a game in half that time when inspired) while the latter is altogether another matter.

I seem to remember that last time these were done people tended to wait around until they got an idea and started their designing (and the clock) then. Of course it's no skin off my nose, but I'd find that distasteful myself; the exercise is supposed to be about forced creativity, not forced typing. Anyway, it seems that I've too much gamesmanship in me to really like something this vague. Or I'm just too confident in my ability to get my blood to boil for this.

[philreed]

Yes, the plan is to create and release -- in 24 hours -- a 24-page game. You're on your honor not to use any existing ideas or designs; the goal of the project is to see just what you're capable of in a tight deadline.

It was a great creative exercise for me last year and I'm happy to say I just released the Deluxe version of vs. Monsters in PDF. And tomorrow I start taking pre-orders for the print version (including the boxed set).

As of now, I have some big projects through July 15 or so. I'm thinking the weekend of the 17-18 may be good.

[sirogit]

Hey, this sounds pretty cool.

Did you really mean the bit about the game being 24 pages long? I've never written much that long.

[philreed]

Hey, this sounds pretty cool.

Did you really mean the bit about the game being 24 pages long? I've never written much that long.

Yep. That's part of why I considered vs. Monsters to be a failure last year -- the PDF was only 20-pages long.

[Jeph]

I don't think anyone actually made the full 24 pages. Yee Olde West was 9, Vespertine was 19, Sunrise was 16, Pace was 18, Criminal Element was 12... hell, I think Vs. Monsters might have been the longest. And it was certainly the prettiest.

This year I'll be formatting mine for A5. That should help. :D
--Jeff

[Lxndr]

How extreme and fixated is this "no previous ideas" thing?  I mean, if I've done a game using dice pools before, does that mean no dice pools?  If I've done a game using a roll-under-TN system, does that mean no TN-under-rolling?  does this apply to games we've seen?  What if I realize halfway through that, wait, I once briefly flirted with the idea of basing a game on fhqhwgads, but forgot about it until just now... does that invalidate my work?

I can't seem to find much in the other thread addressing this question.