An Introduction

[Sp4m]

I'm a newcomer to these parts. I heard about Gamechef about a week ago, and I'm looking forward to putting my best foot forward.

I'm no one special, just an avid gamer who's long since departed the path of franchise game worlds.

Looking forward to entering Gamechef, and stretching my brainworms.

My own slice of web 1.0!
www.goodideagames.com

My Gamechef Blog!
http://goodideagames.wordpress.com/

[AMuses]

I'm new, too! Heard about Game Chef last year, but I think it was after it had started and didn't feel confident enough to try to throw something together. Spent this past year playing a whole heck of a lot more RPGs and now following a bunch of gamers on Google Plus, where I was reminded of this year's contest. I've studied Shakespeare so the theme this year is intriguing to me. Never designed a game before, but I'm willing to give it a shot!

[Nathan P.]

Welcome! The whole point of Game Chef is that you don't have to be anyone "special" (whatever that means) to write a game, so no worries there. New is good. Looking forward to seeing whatcha got!

[Marhault]

Awesome!  Good luck to you both!

[Xander V]

I'm also brand new to this. I've been GMing and messing around with game design for years but never done anything worth showing to other people. Hopefully this will light a fire under my butt.

[MrLax]

This is my fifth Game Chef, with only one contest that I yielded because I didn't have enough time to cook up something that I was happy with. My first time in the Forge though, and I think that I might stick around here after this.

Happy to see lots of newcomers here this year. I think that my first Chef in 2006 was also my personal favourite this far. Let's see what this year brings forward

[somori]

I've joined the Forge just to play in my first GameChef. This should be a very interesting kick-start in RPG design for me. Can't wait to see what comes through in the first round.

I'm bored waiting though... anybody want to start a sweepstake on when the ingredients get posted? 5 non-currency points to enter, choose a time to the nearest minute, closest wins. Any ties get split. I reckon it'll be 21:00 GMT.

Or, why don't we do something vastly more interesting like talking about what makes something Shakespearean?

My interpretation is currently of a drama that is based on inevitability. What I know of the plays shows that you can't fight fate and the audience is merely watching the characters on stage come to that horrible realization. Of course, this comes from study done over a decade ago so I wouldn't take it as gospel.

[Nathan P.]

One of the things that makes Shakespeare so enduring in Western culture, I think, is how incredibly flexible the work is. Like, a lot of people are forced to read Romeo and Juliet in school by a teacher who doesn't really have an investment in it, so they get bored and it becomes this elitist thing where liking Shakespeare is a sign of class. But then, West Side Story is still one of the most popular musicals, and movie adaptations of musicals, ever made. There's a richness in the tension between, like, getting super-deep and analytical about the original folios of the texts versus enjoying the basic stories because the stories themselves are (generally) universal and enduring moments of humanity.

I've seen a LOT of Shakespeare performed and been involved with a number of productions on the technical side, and the most interesting thing to me that became apparent over time is that the actors really matter. Because the language is just foreign enough to most modern english-speakers, the actors (a) knowledge of what they are actually saying and (b) ability to translate meaning through body language and expression becomes the key determining factor, for me, of whether watching the show is actually entertaining or not.

Anyway, some thoughts on the theme...

[Fredrix]

I'll add my own intro to this thread. New to Game Chef, played table-top RPG since my school days. I get together with my old school friends (and others now) a few time a year to continue the Pendragon Campaign we started years ago (Arthur is finally on the scene), or play Serenity, Feng Shui or Traveller.