With vs. Monsters Deluxe finished I'm ready to try another 24-hour game. Anyone else up for doing some of these over one weekend in July?

Sure thing. What happened to that Yahoo group with last year's games on it? It still around?

--Jeff

I'd love to give that a try! I'm sure I can pick an idea out of my head for that.

Certainly down with this. The trick is for this reply to be some kind of auto-pilot so I don't immediately start thinking of ideas.. which I will then have to discard to comply with the rules. ;)

I'll do it.

But which weekend of July?

I'll make no commitments because I really can't - things are too up in the air with real life at the moment... But if I can be involved, I definitely will be.

Yeah I would be down with that.


Sean

Hey Phil,
Just to avoid this becoming a chorus of "present and accounted for," can you give us a run-down of the rules for 24-hour games so those on the fence can make a more informed decision?

Also, I encourage you not to try to set a date based on group consensus. That way lies madness. :) Just pick a weekend and go for it.

For the curious, this is the original thread from last year.

In summary:

You've got 24 hours to design a complete game. You cannot use any system/design stuff you've come up with before, ever; we start the clock, you start wracking your brain for a game idea, and then try and get it done. "Complete" is determined solely by each individual designer and their personal standards.

..and that's it. Unless I forgot something...

Let me tell you what personally bothers me in this challenge: nobody seems to acknowledge the difference between going into it with a readymade inspiration as opposed to a complete blank. I find the former almost trivial (I frequently write a first draft of a game in half that time when inspired) while the latter is altogether another matter.

I seem to remember that last time these were done people tended to wait around until they got an idea and started their designing (and the clock) then. Of course it's no skin off my nose, but I'd find that distasteful myself; the exercise is supposed to be about forced creativity, not forced typing. Anyway, it seems that I've too much gamesmanship in me to really like something this vague. Or I'm just too confident in my ability to get my blood to boil for this.

Yes, the plan is to create and release -- in 24 hours -- a 24-page game. You're on your honor not to use any existing ideas or designs; the goal of the project is to see just what you're capable of in a tight deadline.

It was a great creative exercise for me last year and I'm happy to say I just released the Deluxe version of vs. Monsters in PDF. And tomorrow I start taking pre-orders for the print version (including the boxed set).

As of now, I have some big projects through July 15 or so. I'm thinking the weekend of the 17-18 may be good.

Hey, this sounds pretty cool.

Did you really mean the bit about the game being 24 pages long? I've never written much that long.

sirogit wrote: Hey, this sounds pretty cool.

Did you really mean the bit about the game being 24 pages long? I've never written much that long.

I don't think anyone actually made the full 24 pages. Yee Olde West was 9, Vespertine was 19, Sunrise was 16, Pace was 18, Criminal Element was 12... hell, I think Vs. Monsters might have been the longest. And it was certainly the prettiest.

This year I'll be formatting mine for A5. That should help. :D
--Jeff

How extreme and fixated is this "no previous ideas" thing? I mean, if I've done a game using dice pools before, does that mean no dice pools? If I've done a game using a roll-under-TN system, does that mean no TN-under-rolling? does this apply to games we've seen? What if I realize halfway through that, wait, I once briefly flirted with the idea of basing a game on fhqhwgads, but forgot about it until just now... does that invalidate my work?

I can't seem to find much in the other thread addressing this question.

Lxndr wrote: How extreme and fixated is this "no previous ideas" thing? I mean, if I've done a game using dice pools before, does that mean no dice pools? If I've done a game using a roll-under-TN system, does that mean no TN-under-rolling? does this apply to games we've seen? What if I realize halfway through that, wait, I once briefly flirted with the idea of basing a game on fhqhwgads, but forgot about it until just now... does that invalidate my work?

I can't seem to find much in the other thread addressing this question.

24 pages is a lot of content! You really need to buckle down and work straight through.

You could always use a 24 point font :)

Are there links for the other attempts from last year? I've only seen Vs. Monsters and Pace. I'm curious about the others.

Sounds interesting.

I think I'll kill myself and give this a shot. :)

I'm in, for real. As long as it's ANY weekend in July other than 24-25th. I've got to run a con that weekend.

-Andy

Does the contest work well as "choose a 24 hour period in this fortnight", which would leave a great deal more flexibility for people to join in?

I take it there's no theme we need to stick to - do whatever you want?

Sounds really exciting for the participants - but I thought that when this was started the objective was to finish a game in 24 hours? Particularly those games that have been kicking around half finished in your paper file or hard drive somewhere. That seemed like a fun challenge but also something that's extremely worthwhile. When did the emphasis change? (or am I thinking of another game-design endeavour people did?)

I've tried similar things a couple times, but never did finish (usually because other things in my life needed my attention). Having a pre-defined date to do this would work, though. I might just join you.

Tony Irwin wrote: Sounds really exciting for the participants - but I thought that when this was started the objective was to finish a game in 24 hours? Particularly those games that have been kicking around half finished in your paper file or hard drive somewhere. That seemed like a fun challenge but also something that's extremely worthwhile. When did the emphasis change? (or am I thinking of another game-design endeavour people did?)

Brett M. Bernstein wrote: Are there links for the other attempts from last year? I've only seen Vs. Monsters and Pace. I'm curious about the others.

Jeph wrote: Turns out the Yahoo! group still exists, and it has most of the games linked to in the Files section.

So. Do we have a date set for this madness? :)

I think the way we ran it last time was we set aside a weekend: at some point in that time, you declared your start-time and your end-time was 24 hours after that.

So.. how about 9th, 10th, and 11th as '24-Hour Game Weekend'?

That weekend wouldn't work for me, as it's the last weekend I have my kids for a month, and we have alot of family things planned.

The next weekend would be better... but that's just my vote.

philreed wrote: As of now, I have some big projects through July 15 or so. I'm thinking the weekend of the 17-18 may be good.

Okay, let's kill this thread. There will be an announcement in the next week or so that gives complete details and a schedule (I'm looking at creating a two-week window of opportunity for this round of 24-hour games).

Thanks for the interest, guys! I hope a lot of you try this out.

Uh, oops. I started mine before I saw your post, Phil, and hey, inspiration struck when I had some free time, so I ran with it. Beginning on 4:00 PM one Tuesday, July 6th; ending at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, July 7th. Title: Once Upon a Time and Long Ago. A game with which the players look back at their childhoods through a darkly fantastical lense.

--Jeff

Hey guys,

Finished. 24 pages in 21 hours. Unfortunately...

It's 50 MB. Probably because of the way I put the background in, because I don't know shit about formatting. Is there any way to change the resolution of a .pdf file so that it isn't quite so... grotesquely huge?

Thanks,
--Jeff

Nevermind. Got it down to 1 MB. Pick it up here.

Hey Jeph,

Just a heads up. The link only works if you Save the document. It may just be me, but using Open results in a file not found error.

-Chris

Both ways worked for me...

Okay... I've looked through Once Upon a Time and Far Away and have to say that you've done a good job, Jeph. I'm going to playtest it with my beautiful little princess and dashing princes and see where it goes. *grin*

While Phil is pulling together an announcement thread, I just wanted to post my little PR about the new 24 Hour RPG site:

---------------

Hey all, Thanks to a little inspiration, and some guidance from Phil Reed, I've gone ahead and developed a simple 24 Hour RPG site.

I'd like that site to be a storehouse for the 24 Hour RPG project, including being the "face" of the project (ie listing news items, future 24 hour RPG dates, etc), hosting the files created for the event, and listings for the various designers who participated.

In a few days I'll have a "Designer Listing" (like an "About the Author") for for the previous and current designers to fill out. In the meantime, I'm hunting for the following:

1) Permission to link to or post previous submissions. If so, please fill out the "Submit!" form at my site and either submit your game directly, else post the URL of the place where I can find it. All the people who submit their game will later (in a week or so) receive a form to fill out to be your "Designer Listing". I'll also be asking for a pic that I can use (size max 250 pixels on longest size- else submit anything and I'll resize it for you), so now's your chance to hunt for that One Pic that makes you look good (or feel free to submit anything as your profile pic).

2) Support, in the form of people with server space that wouldn't mind acting as mirrors to help me save bandwidth. I don't mind funding the site and domain name, but if bandwidth is going to be a killer, I'll be... disappointed... if I can't pull in enough Paypal donations or server mirrors to keep the project going.

That's about it. The site can be found at www.24hourrpg.com , and in a few days "vs Monsters" will be listed.

Thanks for your time!

Is it neccessary to 'sign-up' before hand, or can we just submit a finished game at the designated time?

BTW, this is me saying I'll probably participate.

timfire wrote: Is it neccessary to 'sign-up' before hand, or can we just submit a finished game at the designated time?

BTW, this is me saying I'll probably participate.

Is our entry still eligible if it's not in pdf format?

Crackerjacker wrote: Is our entry still eligible if it's not in pdf format?

I posted my 2004 entry on 08-02 at 11:52 PM PST. For some reason I can't post a message to the Yahoo group, though (!@#@#! Yahoo), so I'm posting here. The reason for the late submission is two-fold:

A. I'm lazy and like to procrastinate.
B. Corel makes a really shitty word processor that caused by whole PC to crash around 9:45 PM PST.

Conisdering B, I don't think that my submission (Roguelike) turned out all that bad (though when I was recovering the file from Corel Hell, I did lose two pieces of clipart). I'll upload the completely restored file to my site (Miscellaneous Debris) as soon as I finish rebuilding it.

On the plus side I've learned that Corel isn't built for procrastination.