[Contest] Write 7 lines in 10 days

[Sebastian K. Hickey]

I'm looking for help, so I'm holding a contest. This has been posted over on Story Games too.

I'm looking for sample scenarios (called Frames—read this?) for game called Hell for Leather. They're 7 lines long (see below).

Best entry goes into the book and wins a PDF.

HfL: Standard Frame

Setting: Near future, hyperviolent media, vast public screenings, global slums, sex, drugs and bruises
Adversary: The Network
Gore Threshold: 5
Connection: Class of ‘99
Drop-Off: London Bridge
Objective: Insein Prison, Burma
Checkpoints: Travel to India, Destroy Kalaymyo Barons, Parachute into the Insein Prison

Submissions by the 18th of March.

[The purpose of this contest is to provide me with a new perspective on my own design, to push me out of my own restrictions and to expose the game to the community]

[Ar Kayon]

Alright, I'll take a stab at it:

Setting: The Apocalypse, 2099
Adversary: Michael the Archangel
Gore Threshold: 4
Connection: The Gates of Heaven
Drop-Off: The Battle of Manhattan
Objective: The Ninth Layer of Hell
Checkpoints: Track down Michael‘s whereabouts, Enter the ninth layer via betrayal…or the long way, Convince Michael to return to Earth or do battle with him

((Idea: play as Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael))

[Excalibur]

Here's a shot, off the cuff...

Setting: Near Past, Lovcraftian, Remote Boston Suburb
Adversary: The dark entity under the Suburb
Gore Threshold: 4
Connection: High School Field Trip Attendees Incl 2 Teachers
Drop-Off: Town Square, dropped off by school bus
Objective: Stay Alive, stay sane, and escape
Checkpoints: Take bus to the Town Square, Tour Historic Houses, Tour Revolutionary War Tunnels, Explore Unmapped Cave System, Witness Unspeakable Evil, Attempt Escape through Controlled Suburbanites, Survive Cannibalistic Teachers, Escape to next Town

[Ben Lehman]

Setting: 19th century, colonial, China
Adversary: the british
Connection: secret society
Drop-off: rural hunan
Objective: destroy the british empire
Checkpoints: Shanghai Foreign Concession, Governor's office in Hong Kong, Buckingham Palace

[Ron Edwards]

Setting: northern California coast, 1980s, sleepy little town, fishing, some pot growing, handicrafts
Adversary: police, Chamber of Commerce
Gore Threshold: 7
Connection: motorcycle gang
Drop-Off: bar fight gone very wrong
Objective: the coastal highway
Checkpoints: Get buddy out of jail cell, Make scheduled connection for re-upping pot supply, Get revenge on authority figure of choice

You'll notice I've gone a bit off-genre here, on purpose.

[David Berg]

Setting: 1917 Baltimore, experimental insane asylums, war fervor, Frankenstein-style fusion technology (clockwork, tesla coils, alchemy)
Adversary: Research & Development branch of the United States military
Gore Threshold: 3
Connection: foreign spies
Drop-Off: Cheltham Prison
Objective: secret military R&D "asylum" full of convicts
Checkpoints: track Prisoner 187 through Cheltham, the criminal review system, insane asylum operations, secret transports, to the top military R&D spot

[Sebastian K. Hickey]

The competition is now closed. Thanks for your genius.

I'll be back soon with the results.

[Sebastian K. Hickey]

Cross posted on Story Games.

I was enormously impressed with the quality of submissions. In this post I outline what I've learned, point you to the runners up and finally close with the winner.

If you write a contest, make it easy to enter. That's what I learned from this project. By that, not only do I mean make it simple and clean, but also make it attractive. I'd originally titled the contest "Build me a Frame." As soon as I called it "Write 7 Lines in 10 Days" people took interest. It seems obvious in hindsight.

If you want to break English, make sure you tell people that's what you're doing. In Hell for Leather Checkpoints don't mean locations, they mean tasks. This was completely miscommunicated. Unless you play specific kinds of shooty video games, the word "Checkpoint" means a point at which a check is made. Did I highlight the difference in the contest? Did I go out of my way to translate my intention? Check the submissions. They shout my mistake.

Runners Up
Which leads me on to the runners up. My god, your brains are big and generous. There were some beauties in there that I'd love to use in the book—but the checkpoints didn't fit the template. Check out Group Therapy, Virus, Frankenstein Prison (Forge), 19th Century China (Forge), Eyes in the Skies, Fragile Future, Zombie Football Team or the Lovecraftian School Trip (Forge). Amazing artistry.

That made it a little easier to choose the runners up (which feature on the Hell for Leather wiki). All of these are awesome and unexpected. Well done guys. Here they are:

The French Wars of Religion by Eoin Corrigan (Cobweb)
Aztec by Jason Hickey
Rome by Daniel Z. Klein
Terran Resistance by Hudson
Inside the Code by Ben Wright
Angel Apocalypse by Christopher Heath (Forge)
Rumble Fruit by Joe McDonald

Winner
Before I announce the winner, a special nod to Ron Edwards, Joe Murphy, Joe McDonald and Pete for trying to bend the game. You are rebellious and inspiring.

Now, on to the potatoes of the contest. Baruuummmm Baruuuuump! Congratulations to Sam Zeitlin for his winning entry, The Most Dangerous Game. It's off kilter, colourful and open to massive interpretation, yet it's clean, simple and direct. Maximum points for elegance.

Well done everyone and thanks for helping out!

Sebastian.

[Excalibur]

Oh, well, too bad I didn't make it in Those others were pretty darned nifty and got my thought juices flowing...

Good luck with the rest of this project!

[Excalibur]

If you want to break English, make sure you tell people that's what you're doing. In Hell for Leather Checkpoints don't mean locations, they mean tasks. This was completely miscommunicated. Unless you play specific kinds of shooty video games, the word "Checkpoint" means a point at which a check is made. Did I highlight the difference in the contest? Did I go out of my way to translate my intention? Check the submissions. They shout my mistake.

Hmm, I understood the checkpoints to be tasks which is why I worded them the way I did. They involve places but not specific enough and include some sort of action in them.

May I ask how I was supposed to have worded the frame? out of curiosity's sake. (Luckily I am not a cat).

-Curt

[Sebastian K. Hickey]

Hi Curt,

In your case the wording was fine. But there was a bit of a miscommunication of template. In Hell for Leather, there are only 3 Checkpoints and each is themed (Covert, Overt & Access). In your entry there were many Checkpoints and lots of them were passive.

If you could refine your Checkpoints, I'd love to post your Frame on the Cobweb Games wiki. Have a look through this PDF if you're looking for guidelines.

Sebastian.

[Excalibur]

OK, here's the revised frame for you.

Setting: Near Past, Lovcraftian, Remote Boston Suburb
Adversary: The dark entity under the Suburb
Gore Threshold: 4
Connection: High School Field Trip Attendees Incl 2 Teachers
Drop-Off: Town Square, dropped off by school bus
Objective: Stay Alive, stay sane, and escape
Checkpoints: Find the Teachers who are the guides for a tour of tunnels dug during the Revolutionary War, Witness the Dark Entity in the tunnels corrupt the Teachers into cannibalistic monsters, Escape to the next town through unmapped tunnels and their population of twisted creatures.

In Lovecraftian stories, it is really difficult for people to destroy the evil menace. What usually happens is that their sanity is chipped away because they were shown a part of the universe that is usually veiled to the human race. This is why the second checkpoint is a witness event instead of a combat one.

[Sebastian K. Hickey]

Hi Curt,

I guess that Lovecraft cannot be plugged into the Hell for Leather engine so easily. Hell for Leather is very much a game of grand objectives. If you run a game where the Checkpoint is to witness something, there will be a point in the session where everyone gets stumped. When you set a Challenge or describe a Backdrop, you are trying to bring your team toward your next Checkpoint. If that Checkpoint is passive, things get clumpy very quickly.

A better solution would be:

Checkpoints: Sneak through the underground tunnels of the Dark Things, Defeat the Teachers (who have become cannibalistic from cosmic Terror), Climb the back of the Spiny Beast to escape the tunnels into the next town.

The first Checkpoint might be a too vague to function, but essentially these are the types of tasks that need to be set in the Frame. Hell for Leather works best when you can accomplish tasks through murder. If there isn't anything to murder, the game won't work so well. I think Lovecraftian horror breaks the warranty.

[Excalibur]

The solution you present would be pretty fun, I think.

This game is a bit different from ones I've played before and I would naturally think of many different checkpoints or turns in the scenario. I guess I think that way due to how novels are laid out in different chapters where you build up to the climax which might be a couple of chapters and then transition to the conclusion.

So, keeping that in mind, I might come to this version of the frame:

Setting: Near Past, Lovcraftian, Remote Boston Suburb
Adversary: The dark entity under the Suburb
Gore Threshold: 4
Connection: High School Field Trip Attendees Incl 2 Teachers
Drop-Off: Town Square, Office of Tourism
Objective: Escape from the town
Checkpoints: Explore dark Revolutionary War tunnels for an exit while avoiding twisted creatures; Destroy twisted, cannibalistic teacher sent by the entity; Escape through the only exit which is located in dark entity's cavern

[Sebastian K. Hickey]

Looks like fun. I've put it in the wiki. Good job!

Sebastian.