[Rajah Spiny Rat] Revelation of a newly finished game contest entry...

[Bret Gillan]

Michael,

Just off the bat, I'm finding your game inaccessible to the point where it's difficult for me to give any feedback on the rules. The font hurts my eyes and the arcane way I'm instructed to read the text makes the game seem unapproachable unless I invest some serious energy into it. Are there design decisions driving the book's arrangement?

[Vulpinoid]

Generally for Bret

I could take the glib response here and say that you're karma is obviously holding you back, and you need to open your mind to truly understand the subtle depths within the game...

...but I won't.

Instead I'll say thanks for the feedback.

The game is very experimental.

Experimental in its layout and in it's mechanisms.

I knew that I was taking some risks in both regards. Sometimes a risk pays off, sometimes it doesn't. If you play the safe path and create yet another heartbreaker or clone of an existing game, then what are you really doing?

The game is about people making a mark on the society around them, and walking their own paths so it made sense from a design perspective to take these risks. This has really gotten a few readers excited and intrigue, but it's alienated others. I also tried to capture some of the feel of Hinduism through the game, and that's something else that I haven't really seen done well before. Hindu scriptures and mantras often reveal fragments through stories, poetry or song; I was seriously going to reveal the whole game in this manner, but that was getting too esoteric. Hence the current format...a half page of sanskrit-style poetry followed by a half page of rules that put the poetic element into context.   

The whole thing is a continued work in progress, and it'll get a decent revision once Gencon Oz is over.

Generally for Joywriter

The idea of the map with the dice on it is speciafically where I headed with Quincunx, which is the next evolution of the rules.

Well actually, Quincunx is the goal, and Rajah Spiny Rat was an interesting side route where I decided to see where a new direction might take me.

There are a few concepts that I deliberately stripped back for Rajah Spiny Rat, but I'm guessing you can see the directions I've been aiming toward.

When I bring my next round of revisions into the game, I'll be really expanding the section on developing settlements and stories within those settlements. The thing to remember though, is that the game is intended to be collaborative storytelling, with all of the players contributing to the epic under the guidance of a guru/author/GM...(actually, now that I've written that, I might give the GM the title of "Guru" for this game, since this is the person guiding the spiritual journeys of the avatars).

V