24 Hour Game

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Phil,

Wow! Please feel free to consider yourself in charge of the "24-hour Forge Game," just as Mike's in charge of the Iron Chef Game. That means that it can be a regular event at the site, initiated only by you, and under your control essentially as a moderator. All I ask is that it's not too frequent - for instance, the Iron Chef is limited to every six months.

This is awesome.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Wilson]

Hey, am I understanding correctly that I can pick any 24-hour slot in April? If so, I'm going to figure out a date to try it.

[iago]

Hey, am I understanding correctly that I can pick any 24-hour slot in April? If so, I'm going to figure out a date to try it.

I think most people are targetting this upcoming weekend, but some of us can't manage it, and that's just fine.  Do it when you can.  IMO.

[Simon W]

Yeh,
I'd like to start straight away but other commitments......... well you know.

I'll probably do something one day next week, or next weekend.

Trouble is I keep getting all these ideas right now......

Gideon
http://www.geocities.com/simonwashbourne/Beyond_Belief.html

[talysman]

argh!

well, I would like to participate in the 24-hour game, but the best time -- when I'm not likely to be interrupted -- would be saturday... only I had two rpg ideas last night (when I was trying to sleep) and another earlier today.

I admire Jared for creating a couple hundred rpgs, but I don't want to become like him in the space of a single week!

I will try to whip something up on saturday if I have any ideas left by then.

in the meantime, here are some general thoughts I had about this exercise: you may want to rethink the 24 pages stipulation. I realize the original concept (the 24-hour comic book challenge) used 24 pages, plus there's the good point that we do want to see a minimum effort, but 24 pages of RPG in 24 hours may be pushing it. a good comic artist can probably draw a page in less than an hour, leaving time for brainstorming and scriptwriting; but an RPG has more words, so it takes longer to fill up a page.

still, it may be possible to do a 24-page rpg. here are some things to consider...

first, the cover. it's basically title + by-line, in a fancy font, maybe with some artwork. you should be able to finish that page quickly. also, if you do three chapters (chargen, rules of play, game background) with each chapter beginning on its own page, that eats up a little more space and is a good return on time spent for layout. it also gives you an opportunity to do a one-page table of contents, which your word processor should be able to do for you.

if you can create artwork fast, art can also eat up space, but you have to be able to do a quarter-page illustration in less than 15 minutes to make it worth it.

tables eat up more space than time needed to generated them. if you have four or more tables scattered throughout the text, you can duplicate them on a photocopiable "cheat sheet" in the appendix.

a simple character sheet can be a good time investment, too.

game mechanics can't be too fancy. basically, you want to take 2-4 interesting mechanics from other games, merge them quickly, and change some terms for Color. you don't have time to agonize over dice probabilities or effects on strategy.

this is all basically stuff I considered about how one would actually go about writing a 24-page rpg in 24 hours. I don't know if this counts as "helping" anyone or not.

[szilard]

.

The Rules:

You Must Do All Of the Work Yourself. This means no friends assisting you with editing or artwork. Do it yourself. Show us what you can do. Clip-art is, of course, legal.

hmmm...

No collaborations, then?


Stuart

[iago]

.

The Rules:

You Must Do All Of the Work Yourself. This means no friends assisting you with editing or artwork. Do it yourself. Show us what you can do. Clip-art is, of course, legal.

No collaborations, then?

I, personally, don't have a problem with collaborations, but I think the requirements in such a circumstance should be "multiplied" by the number of people working together, in some fashion, to represent the fact that you're able to get more done in that timeframe.  

But since we seem to be moving away from a minimum page-count, that's a little hard to achieve.  With a minimum page count, well then, you just add 24 pages for each participant, but I'm not sure that's the right thing to do.

So, what...? 2-person games in 12 hours?  3-person games in 8?  But are we really doing more than 8 or 12 hours of work as solo folks?

As I talk through it, I think it raises too many questions without easy answers -- probably best to stick with the solo intention (the comic book contest did, after all) for its first outing.

Caveat here being that I am not phil.

I am, however, almost done with my eighth page (like I said, this weekend is bad, and I am home sick today) of pure raw text.   I can't see there being many more pages until the core of the game is done.

As others have pointed out, illustrations are in the offing, for me, thanks to clipart.com.  Tables and appendices and character sheets are certainly a possibility as well.  

I think I'm somewhat handicapped by not having a setting attached to the game, but that's a bed I made for myself, not a complaint.  24 pages is a worthy goal, at least.  I'll reach for it, but I am not sure I'll grasp it.

The point is the trying.

[talysman]

I think I'm somewhat handicapped by not having a setting attached to the game, but that's a bed I made for myself, not a complaint.  24 pages is a worthy goal, at least.  I'll reach for it, but I am not sure I'll grasp it.

maybe not at all... setting material takes more words and time than tables, charts, illustrations, plus more detailed settings require more careful planning. I think a 24-hour rpg needs to be setting-light. a couple pages.

consider Trollbabe. the setting has a definite feel to it, but there's not much details; just a run-down of the distinctions and relationships between trolls and humans, plus a map. I think that's about how much setting you would want in a 24-hour rpg.

[James V. West]

Maniacs! Go!

Hope Iago and Michael are not seeing stars yet.

Just thougth of a weird difference between this project and the standard 24 hour comic challenge. With the comic, you know when you're done. 24 pages is it. When I did mine I actually crashed and slept 4 hours halfway through by pacing myself so I knew I'd finish in time. With a game it's not going to be so easy. You can always go back and edit and redo and exand it right up to the deadline.

[iago]

Hope Iago and Michael are not seeing stars yet.

My god, it's full of, etc.  It's going well enough...  I'm lucky in that I was gripped by a pretty strong concept.  And you make a good point about the ability to go back and revise.  I tend to write pretty lean, but in order to at least strive for the higher page count, I find myself going back and putting in all those examples I usually leave out.  It's good discipline.

[Jonathan Walton]

Well, turns out the most time I'll have to do this is probably... tonight.

I've been thinking about/working on the project for the past 15 minutes, so I'll count that as a beginning.  I'm basically taking this opportunity to finish developing an idea that I probably would never have gotten around to otherwise.

MARK: Wed 9:45 PM.
GAME DUE: Thurs 9:45 PM.

For those of you who want a peek at what's coming (and have a fast connection), you can check out the 500+K pdf of the cover, here (what I have to show for 15 minutes of messing around with Photoshop.

[James V. West]

Impromptu suggestion:

No one should post comments about any works-in-progress. Such comments could be used as "help", which is strictly forbidden in a 24 hour project.

Isolation is important. This is about one person and one idea.

[iago]

Start: 1pm Pacific, 9 Apr 2003.

8:30pm.  I'm into my 12th page of text, I have a table of contents included in that, and the Sudafed is probably going to render this a non-proofread manuscript.  I think I'll make my peace with that over dinner, then come back, finish up the text, and start thinking about illustrations and covers and the like.

[MPOSullivan]

Alright, the first of the 24HourRPGs is up, it seems.  My submission is called Criminal Element and is a game that hopes to emulate great crime thriller and caper novels and films.  System-wise it's kind of influenced by Torchbearer and Dust Devils I think.  It's in need of an overhaul as it was written in 24 hours, but the game i think is kind of fun.  13 pages, including cover, no table of contents or anything looking remotely nice though.  Everything is pretty damned bare bones.  the game is posted in DOC format.  No PDF yet, but one will be up later tonight.

alright ladies and gentlemen, tear into it and tell me what you think.  Hope you all don't get turned off by my attempt at goodness!  ;-)

and as a side note, 24 Hour Comics don't make 24 pages in 24 hours, they simply try to.  As for the RPG attempt, i've gotta say that 24 pages of RPG is kind of arbitrary as there is no standard for RPG book lengths.

Laters,

   -Michael

[Jonathan Walton]

2:00 AM, starting from 9:45 PM.

5 pages, including a cover, in 4 hours.  Conceptually, things are going pretty well, and I think I'm going to include a ton of artwork to provide color (and because it's faster to create pages that way instead of typing).  The hard part comes in deciding how closely I want to stick to source material and how much I should deviate.

Right now, I'm going to grab a few hours of sleep, see what inspiration I can find in dreams, and then start up again really early.

Goodnight all.