Compact RPG Challenge

[Madkitten]

Hello fellow RPG-tinkerers.
This endeavor is about making compact games, in order to show that the making of a game can be quickly accomplished and in order to focus on the important aspects of game-generating: innovation.

Honor those whose honor is due, this is not an original idea of mine, from what I know the ide comes first from Troberg at http://rpglab.net (is in Swedish) and much of the rules are copied from that location

The rules for the endeavor are as follows:

• The game are to be maximally 2 A4 pages long, and a character sheet is to be provided within these two pages.
• The text are not to be less than 8p Arial in size.
• The marginal should be at least 5 mm.
• Illustrations are allowed.
• Basic roleplaying concepts can be assumed to be known (what a GM/ST is, how attributes work and so on).
• A working system should be enclosed in the two pages, no freeforming.
• Lists stating equipment, abilities and the like is not necessary, unless they are part of the system.
• The system used should not be a rip off of an existing system, it can however share similarities.
• Previous submissions cannot be used in future Compact RPG Challenges.
• Games submitted will be put into a short compendium by myself, and should therefor be submitted in a pdf format with the knowledge and consent that it will be published. The submissions should be sent to me, my email will be published close to the submission deadline.
• The game should have a name, the name of the writer/writers and a short abstract of a maximum of 50 words
• Every endeavor will get a theme that should be tried to followed.

In closing, the games will be voted on by the forum-participants here on the forum, within the following categories:

• Best game all over.
• Best concept.
• Best system.
• Most innovative design/idea.
• Best theme.

Other considerations, small and larger:

• Accusations of cheating should be sent to me in private.
• There might be prices, but don't count on it.
• Questions should be directed into this thread.

So, the theme for this endeavor is: Technological Horror.

[Kesher]

Howdy, and welcome to the Forge.

A couple of questions:

1. When is the submission deadline?
2. I assume when you say the collected games will be "published", in this case you mean that the compilation will be made freely available online?
3. What did you have in mind by the term "freeform"?  If you meant "decisions made in the course of the game without resorting to dice" or "decisions made in the game through participant consensus", then I would argue that those things are still "system", just (possibly) using Drama mechanics.  If instead you meant "vague rules that require extra interpretation for use", well, yeah.

(If you're not sure what I meant by "Drama mechanics", you can look here under Drama and Resolution.)

Thanks, you've caught my interest!

Aaron

[Madkitten]

Thank you for participating, and welcome into the challenge Kesher.

1. The 15th of August.
2. Yes, that is correct.
3. Im sorry if I where somewhat obscure. What I meant by not having freeform is that there should exist some sort of underlying mechanic to the game. This does not imply that it needs to be complex, nor involve dice, however, it should be DEFINED how they are to be used, in the context of the game (an explination on how they work, or an example). I hope that this answered your question. Í do not say that it have to involve any random element as well.

[btrc]

I'll bite. Here's something I just whipped up as a 24-hour design, though the formatting to cram it into 2 pages took another day or so... It has 6mm margins and is in 9 point Century Gothic.

http://www.btrc.net/pub/ebonv1.pdf

A mix of the old and new, plain old dice and a few minor twists in terms of mechanics. Nothing spectacular, but an interesting challenge to cram a fully/mostly functional system into 2 pages, with char gen, turn rules, combat, task resolution, damage, magic, sanity, gear, experience, char sheet, etc. Whew! Totally untested, though. Tony, note that I haven't granted reprint permission yet. Everyone is welcome to download and peruse it, but I'll probably do some tweaking before I make a final entry with it. At the moment I'm just setting it up as the initial bar for everyone else to have to jump over, and looking for comments. Except for "you ought to elaborate more on X" comments. Right now it is tight enough that each word I add will require the removal of a word somewhere else.

Greg Porter

[Madkitten]

Greg, that where a very cunning design, I liked it.

I just realized something while skimming through my own rules and Gregs stuff, that was that I never wrote down that some sort of world/backstory should be included in order to "win" the Best concept, Most innovative design/idea and Best theme awards.

I should probably go through them all so that everyone knows my goal orientation:
Best concept: The game that has the most interesting backstory-concept.

Best system: The game with the best system.

Most innovative design/idea: The game who have the newest ideas, not necessary the best game but certainly the most original.

Best theme: The game who follow the theme in the best fashion.

Best game all over: Best game all categories.

[btrc]

Problem is, you can easily write half a dozen pages of backstory. The two page limit gives very little wiggle room. In my case, I just tried to make sure the game mechanics allowed for both technological infrastructure (like guns), and dealt with things associated with horror (fear, sanity, faith, magic). I'd love to see a design that has an original backstory, backed up with good rules, but that will be for someone else to do.

Greg Porter

[Madkitten]

Its OK, its all in good fun after all and you don't have to aim to win all or even any of the competitions.

[Mark Causey]

Interesting! Questions:

1. Does it have to have a character sheet if one isn't needed?

2. Are previous designs that haven't been published okay?

I'll go ahead and ask these questions, but the design I had in mind (Number 2) doesn't fit the theme. I figured I'd ask anyway, as others may have the same questions.

[Chris Peterson]

Greg has shown how the two-page limit can be stretched to its limits, so maybe consider a word limit next time. I believe 250 words/page is a standard estimate, so a 500 word limit sounds about right. Or even less. :-)

[btrc]

I dunno. I think a word limit is sort of implied in there, with 8pt font and 6mm margin limits. Someone else can probably squeeze more words in than I did, but I decided to stay with a 9pt font for readability purposes. Going back to my original file, it looks like Ebon is about 2250 words, so someone who wishes to get a little closer to the margins should be able to do 2500 words without any problem.

Greg Porter

[ffilz]

Could I suggest another catogory: best visual layout

Frank

[Dustfather]

Is there a specific focus of the theme you are looking for-or is the Technological Horror open to interpretation?

[Madkitten]

Greg has shown how the two-page limit can be stretched to its limits, so maybe consider a word limit next time. I believe 250 words/page is a standard estimate, so a 500 word limit sounds about right. Or even less. :-)

Hmmm, I have to think on this one... Perhaps next time, or perhaps start a Compact Extreme RPG Challenge, but nothing changes for this competition...

Could I suggest another category: best visual layout

Sounds excellent, Done and Done.

Is there a specific focus of the theme you are looking for-or is the Technological Horror open to interpretation?

Interpretat, Innovate, Create.

[Colin Fredericks]

Here's mine: Metafiction. Pulling fictional worlds into our own or traveling between them via quantum tunneling, while losing your own identity and being unable to destroy what you call forth. It's roughly 1900 words, for those who are curious.

--Colin

[Madkitten]

Nice good stuff Colin.