So last year (man, that was a whole YEAR ago?), we had this thread that is now marked in my browser Favorites as "Promises," because it consisted of people requested specific games to be written by specific people.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5848

Here are some examples:

Jonathan Walton wrote: I want R. Sean Borgstrom to write a game about the Trojan War. I want to feel the wrath of Achilles in my bones. I want my heart to break at the beauty of Helen.

I want Shreyas Sampat to write a game based on Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities." I really, really, really do. The book is a novel but not a story (falling into the category of "poetic narrative" that came up in the recent thread on microfiction).

Shreyas Sampat wrote: I want Jonathan to finish Fingers on the Firmament. I want to see the faces of the stars.

Walt wrote: I want Jonathan Walton to do a game about a secret society that designs myths and injects them into various cultures in an attempt to change societies by changing the way people think.

I've been thinking about this one for a while...

I want to see Luke Crane write a new game. Doesn't matter what it's about, as long as it perfectly represents his vision of what an rpg is and how one should be played. Burning Wheel is great, but I don't think it's the greatest thing we'll ever see Luke design.

- Scott

I want Chris Edwards (hopefully with help from yours truly :) to write a true cyperpunk game. Not this chromed up sim stuff. I want Burning Chrome the RPG.

I want Scott to do the definitive, revised, full version of Wyrd. And I want it yesterday, dammit.

Rich

I want my self to get off my ass and finally write that Judge Dee game I've always wanted to write.

-Dan Vince

I want Vincent Baker to update and expand Otherkind. Barring that, another highly-themed narratvist fantasy game that reignites my love of the genre.

Barring *ahem* Sorcerer 2nd edition for the moment.

I want a game set in Heaven, the early Christian conception thereof, and I want it to be written by Shreyas, and I want to cry at the beauty while playing it. I want bonus dice for crying at the beauty.

I want a system for ordinary people, ordinary lives, ordinary dramas, keyed towards psychological explorations of the characters and, through them, their players. I want to collaborate on it with Vincent Baker and Ron Edwards. Well, mainly I just want to give them to disorganized pile of notes that sits on my hard drive and let it rip.

I want Gods of War, by Jake Norwood.

yrs--
--Ben

I want Two Clicks -- the game by Vincent Baker about how much it sucks to be some poor fucker humping his shit through the jungles of Vietnam, searching for an enemy he does not want to find.

I want Gridiron, by Jonathan Walton. The sports RPG about rookies in the NFL. What are you willing to do for your career? How much can you take? Are you a winner? At what cost?

I want Sticks and Stones, by Jared Sorensen. I'm not even gonna decsribe this one. Jared can hit this out of the park with the title alone.

I want to see Clinton's game about superheroes. I know he's got one in him.

I really, really want a WWII game from Ron. I can't quite express why. But I don't think I'm the only one.

Jake Norwood, meet Steven Brust. Steve, meet Jake. Done and done. Who's that over there? Glen Cook? Don't mind if I do.

Matt Snyder, your mission is The Golden Compass.

Finally, I want Paul Czege to stop designing games. He's making the rest of us look bad.

Oh, and...

I want an Asian fantasy / history game that isn't reheated D&D and SamuraiNinjaKewl. And, of course, Mr. Walton writes it.

yrs--
--Ben

The Golden Compass, huh? So, do I take that as a nifty title or should I be cribbing notes from Phillip Pullman?

My list:

Ramshead Publshing's black powder era RPG -- Sharpe's Rifles, Aubrey and Maturin, and all that bit.

Adept Press makes a Gene Wolfe inspired science fiction game.

Wicked Dead Publishing unveils a game that makes Hellboy look positively boring.

Anyone makes a wholly compelling narrative Supers game. (You know, one whereI don't have to ignore all that Heortling stuff.)

Ben, please see the Design forum. I'm not familiar with this conception of Heaven, so I will need your help making a game out o it.

Jonathan, that's such a hot idea that I'm putting it on my "me" wishlist. I can see all kinds of interesting ramifications of this zooming in and out approach. Children of Autumn is a great title; if something doesn't strike me then that will be its title.

I think both of you will be pleased to hear that I'm taking a writing class entitled Landscape and Setting in the fall, which has a great reputation for being topical and excellent. I hope I'll be able to take something from that class and apply it to both of these designs, because at one level or another they are both about places that we love.

Why, I just read all Multiverser books (except the novel, which I'll take with me to the north for Easter). I wish for M.J. Young to write a sister game for it with simpler, narrativist rules and more emphasis on the shameless christianity and the idea of playing yourself in a multitude of situations. Just as indifferent to the character's fate, just as intelligent with world design, but with rules I could play with. I'll give a name: "Pilgrim's journey". I hunger to play the doomed agnostic, who spits at the very idea of the alliance (and is therefore quite anarchic).

I, also, want a full version of Wyrd. It derailed my own narrativist-gamist viking game completely, and it's a wrongdoing against nature to let us be without one.

Also, I wish for a new Middle-Earth game from Luke Crane, based on the Burning Wheel rules. It's a crime of copyright laws that the game isn't situated in Middle-Earth.

I'd wish for Refreshing Rain from Shreyas Sampat, except that'd be stupid, being that it already exists and if it didn't, I couldn't imagine it.

Finally, I wish for Jonathan and Chris Lehrich to cooperate on Lévi-Strauss in Amazonia, where a lone anthropologist played by a GM-like player is confronted by indigenous people (played by the rest). The conflict is over popularized forms of anthropologic theory, rules are approached like in MLwM and the question is over the fate of the white scientist, and to a lesser extent the tribe.

For the closing, I wish for all those games I have a hard time imagining. Most of the time I can design the rest myself.

Jonathan Walton wrote:
-- I want Eero to write a game in which players create fictional memories of their shared adventures together. The players would pretend to be old friends who had grown up together (even if they are complete strangers), play themselves in the past, basically, and create fictional shared acquaintances and siblings that you never had. Then you reminisce about the good and bad times, the highs and the lows, that the group "remembers." It would be very casual and unstructured, but other players could denouce certain things based on plausibility or other concerns ("No, dude, that's not the way it happened! It was definitely your mother who caught us drinking beer on the subway!").

Shreyas Sampat wrote: Ben, please see the Design forum. I'm not familiar with this conception of Heaven, so I will need your help making a game out o it.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: I, also, want a full version of Wyrd. It derailed my own narrativist-gamist viking game completely, and it's a wrongdoing against nature to let us be without one.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Finally, I wish for Jonathan and Chris Lehrich to cooperate on Lévi-Strauss in Amazonia, where a lone anthropologist played by a GM-like player is confronted by indigenous people (played by the rest). The conflict is over popularized forms of anthropologic theory, rules are approached like in MLwM and the question is over the fate of the white scientist, and to a lesser extent the tribe.

Sick monkey indeed. A roleplaying game about Claude Lévi-Strauss?!

And it would probably work too... That's the funny thing.

THAT is a game worthy of actually being attempted.

I must must must look at Shreyas' Four. I suspect my future self has already done so and is telepathing me back messages about how much crazy-fun it is.

And John Laviolette? Where is Court of 9 Chambers? Has there been a release of the second mini-game that I have missed? I paint, I pine, I perish!

Consider this the "You have an eager fan in your corner" post.

Cheers,
Steve.

hix wrote:
And John Laviolette? Where is Court of 9 Chambers? Has there been a release of the second mini-game that I have missed? I paint, I pine, I perish!

Court of 9 Chambers is a game I want to see for publication. John Harper's Danger Patrol is a must-have. Fate, Luck, or Will is a game I'm eagerly awaiting. As is 9 Worlds.

I want to see Ron Edwards do a superhero game.

I want to see Jared Sorensen mix Schism (Unleashed) with The Code for the ultimate "underground superheroes" game.

I want a roleplaying game where the characters are modern sorcerers who use oneiromancy to work their magic. Shreyas Sampat would be a prime candidate for this, I think. So would Johnathan Walton.

I want to see Shreyas' game Four, because I want to see a game based on precognition developed.

Bullpen is a game I'd like to see more of.

I'd enjoy seeing Jason L. Blair and Rev. Mother Sean Benjamin Jaffee bring back The Last Exodus. Great backstory, good take on the whole apocalypse angle, needed room to grow but wasn't given it.

I'd be interested in a game where madness could actually be a virus that would not only spread, but "infect" reality and alter it into it's image.

I'd also like to see a game of transhuman horror, where the villains (PCs?) are not vampires or werewolves or alien creatures who look like us, but all of the above: shapeshifters called "Doppelgangers", creatures who not only kill you, but take your memories and your life.

Almost forgot:

The definitive Sword and Sorcery rpg, the same way that there are anime rpgs that cover all the bases, or Cartoon Action Hour covered Saturday morning cartoons of the '80s. Ron Edwards would seem the most likely candidate to do this, but I can't believe that there aren't others out there who'd be willing to give it a shot. C'mon, do we really want Conan d20 eating our lunch?

I would love to see what Paul Czege or Zak Arnston would do with the horror-film genre, using the '70s-'80s "slasher films" as well as the interesting variations on the genre, like Cabin Fever.

Great topic, Jonathan.

I'd like to see Christopher Weeks take his radical politics and make it into the setting for a game. A hardcore narrativist game set in a world like Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed.

I want Chris Bankuei or Jason (cruciel) to write an updated cyberpunk-type game (since we are living in the fu-chore now, we've got to push the boundaries of our sci-fi further) set in a tweaked version of Sao Paulo: the rich inhabit lavish marble-columned, neo-classical penthouses on top of the cheek-by-jowl, jumbled mass of skyscrapers that make up the city. Meanwhile, the squatter underclasses live in the bottom floors of the same buildings, staking their claims to land based on their occupancy beneath the rich flitting from party to party above them in their personal helicopters. This would be a great setting for a martial arts game pulling in any and all styles since SP is an international city. Though having it based on Capoeira would absolutely rock. Maybe Nathan Banks would do it and could incorporate music as well as martial arts into the game!

I'd like to see Mike Holmes and Mark Eddy write a gns hybrid congruent game that intentionally supports omni-play and omni-gming.

I'd like to see Vincent or some other fiendish character write the Dangerous Liasons roleplaying game. Paul? Anyone?

--Emily Care

Emily Care wrote: I'd like to see Christopher Weeks take his radical politics and make it into the setting for a game. A hardcore narrativist game set in a world like Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed.

I'd like to see Emily rise up and do some work on Rise Up. The concept sounds like it has that raise-the-bar-of-what-an-RPG-can-be potential.

Emily Care wrote: I'd like to see Mike Holmes and Mark Eddy write a gns hybrid congruent game that intentionally supports omni-play and omni-gming.

Thanks Daniel! And hear, hear, Dev.

Mike Holmes wrote: Working on something that might fit the bill, actually. Maybe what I need is Mark to get somewhere with it...

I would like to see a game based on these three ideas:
Belief defines, for a particular person, the nature of reality.
It is possible for one person to impose their reality on another.
It is possible for a person to consciously manipulate the nature of his reality.

That is, I want a good version of Mage, where the magic system is the system, and not tacked-on to it.

I think I'd like to see Matt Snyder, Seth ben-Ezra, and Vincent Baker's takes on this... not necessarily to completion, but only to the point of core mechanical framework.

I want to see Daniel finish Gears & Spears. And his new dolphin game, too.

I want to see a Narrativist Sci-Fi game dealing with the premise of Transhumanism and the loss of a functional definition of Humanity, maybe.

I would just like to see Sci-fi that wasn't Sim, to be honest. That delath with, as most good sci-fi novels, the concepts of future technology and their results on society, not the functioning of the technology itself...

...more heart/brain, less silicon.

Perfect fodder for Ron or Vincent, I think.

Hm. On the one hand, I know I am committing sin by posting on this too-old thread. On the other hand, Lord_steelhand's already revived it, it will probably be split, and if I post to some other thread with my wish, we'll have parallel threads. So better to commit the evil of posting here.

I want a game where 'leadership' and the giving and following of orders is incorporated in the rules somehow. Strategic/Tactical.

So, say, there's a group of fighters, but one's focussed on leadership a bit more than the rest (say he has a leadership score of 3, instead of the default 1). With that 3, he's allowed to shout 3 'orders' each combat turn (whatever a combat turn is). If the recipient of the order follows the order, he gets a bonus to the action(s) implied by that order, equal to the leadership score of leader (or a derived bonus from that stat). If the order is completed, both the follower and issuer of the bonus gain some bonus reward on top of the regular, no-order-involved reward that would otherwise be given for that task.

In that system, there would be options for rebellion against orders, etc., and picking order consequences, etc. Preferrably allowing for mass-scale with individual stand-out performance from heroic types.

Made by someone with a solid grasp of combat systems - like BW, or TROS, or anyone else who feels up to the mantle.