24 Hour Games: Nine Games Open for Critique

[Mike Holmes]

I have only one question. What's the point?

Survive until adulthood (20) without turning into a monster (and running off into the forest to sing unearthly tunes to the gods of Sin and evil).

Was that not clear?  I'm planning to expand it soon, with more color and story suggestions and such, so it'd be nice to get more details on what didn't click for you.

Hmmm. Now that you mention it, I can see it. Especially in how the mechanics work. With the fixes you propose, I think you might just have something there. This is one case, however, where I'd suggest a little more direct text on what the object of play is.

Or maybe I'm just dense, and/or reading too fast. :-)

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

I can't think of any RPG that Sunrise is based off of. There may be one with similar mechanics and possibly a similar plot, but if there is, I've never seen it.

Huh.

I swear someone posted a game here with exactly the same premise, including the dates being nearly the same. I can't find it now, but I'm not imagining it. Can anyone help me out?

Also, interestingly, the game bears some resemblance to Rise Again in terms of it being about genetic misfits.

Mike

[Jeph]

A search for "genetics" found only the Genome setting from Sylus Thane's 'Search for the New Frontier thread,' and I don't think I read that. *shrug* Either I can't find it, you're imagining it, or the evil space aliens came in and partially erased both of our memories. I'm betting on the last option.

[philreed]

I don't know what happened but my machine is dead. I've spent the last 24 hours dealing with it but all time for reading and such has been not available at this time.

I just wanted everyone to know where I've gone. Luckily there are multiple computers in the house but my work machine (with everything) is in sad shape.

[scarecrowking]

Mr. Reed,

I think vs. Monsters is pretty good, like someone else said, far beyond a lot of what is on game store shelves.  Umm, how exactly does one determine the number of successes mentioned in the combat section?  Other than that I can find little fault with it.  It's quick, basic, and looks to be very fun.  Just the sort of properties I enjoy in a game.


Thanks,
Brian

[philreed]

Mr. Reed,

I think vs. Monsters is pretty good, like someone else said, far beyond a lot of what is on game store shelves.  Umm, how exactly does one determine the number of successes mentioned in the combat section?  Other than that I can find little fault with it.  It's quick, basic, and looks to be very fun.  Just the sort of properties I enjoy in a game.

I'm not surprised at anything that can't be found in the PDF. As you can tell by reading it, my intelligence level dropped as I got deeper in.

As to number of success, if you have a 6 Fighting and the monster has 5 Defending, for every card you draw that is 5 or higher you get one success. This makes it sound simple to kill monsters (probably too simple now that I think about it). But now draw for damage and check the cap. If you get four successes and the cap is five, for every card you draw greater than five you do no damage to the monster. I'm not sure what I think of that after not having thought about it for a few days.

But right now I'm in worse shape when I wrote that. Give me a few days to get over the computer failure (and get some sleep) and I'll think about it again. And get to actually go over the other games.

[MPOSullivan]

Hey Ron,

thanks much for the mention and attention.  I agree whole-heartedly with your assesment of the whole 24HourRPG thing.  When i was writing Criminal Element i found myself too worried about getting the information down on the page to create a "gamer" sounding text.  This resulted in my own voice getting through a bit, especially in the way things were titled, and i wound up with something that i think is actually comfortable to play.  All of the books wound up becoming highly conversational, it was liek the authors were speaking directly to the player, discarding that wall of authorship that seperates creator and reader.  

It also shows up in unnecessary text: Criminal Element does not actually use Static/Opposed mechanics; it quite rightly uses Opposed mechanics ... but Michael somehow felt the need to cast the mechanics-discussion into Static/Opposed terms. With any luck, he can now go back, read it, and say, "What the hell did I do that for?" with a positive impact on his later work (which might include developing CE).

now that you say it, i definetly see it.  there's no reason for that seperation and a quick description of how to assign difficulties for actions that don't have a character opposing you would be both simpler and more effective.  thank you for the pointer!

and, now that i'm in it this far, i do plan on developing CE to its fullest.  i've got a cover done for the book and a character sheet.  i've been re-touching the text and expanding upon a lot of ideas and working on a new introduction to the game.  trying to keep things short and sweet.  got it running around 20 pages now, wouldn't mind getting it up to around the same length as Whispering Vault or something.  100 pages, maybe a little more.  

laters!

    -m

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Michael,

Actually, I'd refer to the "voice" phenomenon as true authorship, as opposed to fake-ass authorship that tries to be all Industry-like.

I've taken further discussion of Criminal Element to its own thread, Comments on Criminal Element. Let's do the same for any of the 24-Hour RPGs from now on.

Best,
Ron