Emily Care wrote: November? What have we got on tap for it?

R Sean. Borgstrom wrote: There's a man in Missouri. He's standing on top of the Dove's Treasure. He doesn't know that. He couldn't know that. It's just an odd disc of metal. It's sitting out by the road. To the doves, it is their souls; it is their destiny; it is everything that is good and beautiful in the world. For two hours, the man has been standing there. He's been hogging the Dove's Treasure. They all know, even though only a tiny minority of the world's doves live in Missouri. They can feel him. There's an ominous and brooding song in their souls. They want to strike back.

"You don't want to stand there," says a little girl. "It's sacred."

The man smiles. He looks patronizing. He shuffles a little to the left. "Is that enough?"

"You're lucky," she says.

There's a woman in Arkansas. She's having the galaxy tattooed onto her arm. The tattoo artist is asleep, but he's still going. He's put on most of the galaxy, and it's beautiful, and perfect, and real, but there's a shadow on the stars. He's starting to tattoo in the thing that casts that shadow.

The phone rings. He startles. He blinks. He's impressed by what he's done so far, but he can't imagine where he was going.

He's lucky.

There's a girl in Kentucky. She gets up and goes to the window. She looks at her reflection. For a moment, she sees her wings.

Sometimes, things happen. Little things. Stupid things, maybe.

Good things.

It's worth remembering.

So, I was thinking that if there's something else the journal needs, I might have the time...

Jonathan Walton wrote:
- I'd like to do some funky layout stuff, where articles are seperated by pages containing a few paragraphs of good writing: either people writing about really great/educational moments in their own play history or bits of really evocative imagery/conversations that could inspire play (like the "flores" in Nobilis, or the fiction excerpts in Shreyas' game Torchbearer).

I think if we can get all those different pieces to come in, that the journal's first issue looks pretty golden. I don't want to make it bigger than we have to, since it's quality over quantity after all and more text just means more time editing and proofreading.

And, if you have good writing, either bits of vaguely-roleplaying-related fiction or thoughts on your best/worst/educational/formative roleplaying experiences, why don't we start a new thread where people just throw them down.

What kind of deadline are we looking at? I am slowly working toward a piece on structuralism, myth, and RPGs, but it's going to take a bit of time and energy that I don't right now have.

Chris

Jonathan,

Just sent you the pdf of Unaris.
Should give you a lot of material.
I'll be sending design notes and some excerpts in a few days.

If you want to send me a Q and A that'd be fine also.

Gary

Having already bought the game, I would be interested in recieving the designer's notes. And the PDF, too, frankly :-)

yrs--
--Ben

Re: DEADLINES

Well, nobody's really thrown a good deadline up there for us to discuss. I was going to wait until we have, say, 50% of the first drafts up before setting a deadline for the rest of the drafts and then for revisions. I can personally say that I'm going to try to get my first drafts in by next weekend. If other people can play to do the same, that'd be great. Otherwise, make me an offer. When can you get it done?

Re: UNARIS

Ben, are you ready to run and gun on the Polaris stuff or do you want to be one of the go-to guys for creating the Unaris montage/review/playtest/whatever? I was hoping to get an IRC game togehter where we could tear through the system the way it's meant to be played, try a few variations, muck around with Hacking a bunch, and then write up our experiences to piece together with the excepts and Q&A and whatever else we get from Gary. In any case, if people have good questions for Gary, you can send them my way or post them in a new thread, so we can compile that and send it off to him.

I'm planning on posting my draft early next week.
--Em

Okay, folks. Check in time. It'd be great if everyone would write a short post of the following:

A. Where you are on any material you may be working on.

B. What you need from the group (this is where you admit that you're lost or discouraged or can't get up the energy to write).

C. How soon you think it'll be ready for the next stage of the process (first draft, near-final, final).

D. A deadline that you can give yourself and stick too.

E. Anything else you want to ask about.

Here's me:

- So let's ignore my "Introduction" for now. It's secondary to getting the rest of the material ready. I've written a couple of pages and have a bunch of quotes to work from, but it's nowhere close right now. I may finish it later, or I may just turn it into an article for the next issue.

A. I've gotten pretty deep into the first draft of the Arthouse Wuxia article I'm co-writing with Shreyas. I'm doing a draft of the analysis and history and Shreyas is doing a draft of the game system. Then I figure we'll switch and work on adding to what the other person wrote for their piece. Or maybe we'll each develop our peices seperately. We'll see.

B. Let's see. What I need from the group: patience while I finish the first draft what will be a really long article. I'm analyzing a bunch of movies on a character-by-character basis, translating large speeches from Chinese, and having to watch these films over and over again. It's been slow, and I haven't really done much else for the past couple of weeks.

C. Ideally, I'll have the first draft done by the end of this week, but that might not be possible. A more likely goal would be finishing my movie analyses by the end of the week (roughly one movie per day) and then doing the section on the critical elements of wuxia the week after. Which would mean a first draft by the beginning of December. I don't know what Shreyas' schedule looks like or when he'll have time to get the draft of the system done, so I'll let him speak for himself on his component.

D. So here's my personal deadline for myself: one movie a day for the rest of this week, and then one major element of wuxia (for the next section) each day for the week after. That'll give me a finished draft by December, and it's a pace I can probably handle. Tonight will be Ashes of Time night, tomorrow will be Crouching Tiger, etc.

Okay, more things to talk about:

So we have some of these proposed pieces that haven't seen any real development. First, I haven't heard anything from Neel since I first talked to him about including Lexicon. I've got the original game text, but I'd really like him to clean it up and add his comments to it, developing it into a full article. If that doesn't happen, it means we don't have a game, aside from the thing me and Shreyas are working on.

Option #1: Find Neel and get him to commit.
Option #2: Go with the wuxia game as Game of the Month.
Option #3: Find a new game (what?).
Option #4: Include Lexicon as it is and get somebody to write an article to go with it, talking about the game, its implications, and how people have used it so far.

Another thing:

So I've got a PDF of Unaris and a hankering to play it, but I need some people to play it with me and be willing to record their thoughts about it. I can probably get a crew together from the IRC folks that hang around #indierpgs on Magicstar, but I wanted to post an announcement in case other people want to get involved. I haven't talked to Gary about what's fair use of the "review copy" PDF file. Maybe he'll let me hand out copies to people involved in our playtest and article writing (Gary?). Maybe we'll just have to teach the game to people who don't have it. In any case, we'll work something out. Email me if you're interested in being involved.

I think I shouldn't be the lead person on the Unaris article, since I'm up to my ears in arthouse wuxia. Does anyone here want to do it? If not, I might be able to recruit someone from the IRC crew to head up the project. We'll see.

Additionally:

Do we need to go find more people to submit or more content, possibly lesser-known, already-written content that can just be revised and published right away? I don't know how the first issue looks to you, but I was hoping for say 6-8 solid pieces, and it looks more like we'll have 4-5 right now. Any suggestions on people to ask or places to look? Most of the people I would have asked are, presumably, reading this thread. But maybe I need to go around sending out personal emails again.

Anyway, there's where I stand right now and what's going through my head. Let's see where everyone else is and then keep it moving along.

Hi Everyone,

Ben, just released Unaris on PDF for $5.95. I can email you and everyone who is participating in the session a free copy. Don't email yours as it's not a secured copy. So that takes care of the rules. (Anyone who has already bought a print copy can get the PDF copy for free. Just email me at orders@goldleafgames.com.)

I would be happy to run a session for your group. I'd ask you to go through 2 sessions, one by me, one run by someone else. So you can get two different viewpoints. I can send you a small starter session if you would like. Two pages of notes and the gamemaster is good to go. One thing that has occurred from me running all these chat sessions over the last three months is that adventures writeups are now short and sweet.

I'm available to run a session on Thursday night.

I'll watch this post for a reply for your needs.

Instead of sending you all my gamenotes, I'd like to propose you just send me a one page questionaire that I can answer. I could turn that around quickly.

Some of the threads from the Forge provide some fun hacking examples also.

Additionally, here is a review from Pookie in the UK. I don't think he played the game but I believe it's a fair review.

Matthew Pook


Please give Matthew Pook credit.

 

Code of Unaris
Published by Goldleaf Games LLC
Written by Gary Pratt

Cover by Eric Lofgren

Illustrated by Sedone Thongvilay, Derek Fridolfs, Peter Martin, Ray Dillon, Roxell Karr, & Socar Myles

Cartography by Eric Hotz & Daniel Schenstrom

318-page Perfect Bound Book; $15.95


Code of Unaris is different in two ways. First is its size. At 4? by 6?-inches it is one of the smallest of RPG books since the AD&D 2nd Edition reprints. Second, as an RPG, it is not intended for tabletop play, but for online play. Unlike other RPGs designed for that purpose, Code of Unaris is not played on dedicated servers or software. Rather it uses online chat software as its platform, such as MSN Messenger or ICQ, meaning that it can be played by a widely dispersed group of players rather than one sat around a table in a living room.

The fact that Code of Unaris is played in chat rooms is integral to the setting. Unaris began as an online computer sim, like a MUD or MUSH, powered by a master AI and set on the world of Unaris, the name of the Earth’s moon over a billion years ago. Its setting is the Sunset Kingdoms, during the high fantasy golden age of Unaris’ Third Age. In reality, the program running Code of Unaris is not creating a game, but a wormhole back into humanity’s long distant past! At the other end of the wormhole, an ancient immortal known as the Winter Warlock discovers the existence of the wormhole and realizes that mankind at least survived his plans to destroy Unaris. Despite the best efforts of games’ designers, they could not close the wormhole and somehow the Winter Warlock escaped.

Suddenly the inhabitants of Unaris were faced by an onset of a malevolent ice age. As temperatures plummeted and glaciers spread over the sunset kingdoms, magicians worked to enact the last great creation of the Third Age. The Alfar Tower, 50 miles square and 100 tall, is civilization’s last refuge, consisting of 20 levels that will each become home to a different kingdom and people from the world outside. As Unaris enters its Fourth Age, magic weakens, and the denizens of the Alfar Tower try to live as before, conducting trade and preserving knowledge of the Third Age as best they can. Meanwhile, the Winter Warlock and his multitudinous minions camp outside, campaigning to break through the tower’s unnaturally tough stone walls. Some have managed to creep in, but are now trapped, working to undermine the surviving societies inside the tower. This is eased by an earthquake that rocked the tower, collapsing tunnels and blocking access between the levels and to the Great Stair that runs from top to bottom.

The two ages are the initial settings for playing Code of Unaris. The first is the Third Age, a rich feudal setting in on the verge of a renaissance. It is also advanced in the science of mathematics, but this has been outlawed after the formula for time travel was discovered. The second is the Fourth Age, 5,000 years later, set inside Alfar Tower and is more post-apocalyptic in nature as everyone strives to survive and rebuild once again to face threats unknown. Eventually, if a player character Mathematician can advance his knowledge of time travel algorithms, as measured by his Calculate skill he can travel to any period in Unaris’ history. Initially he is only able to travel between the two dates in the Third and Fourth Ages.


Reflecting the fact that Code of Unaris is played online, characters are simply defined. A character has 22 common skills (such as fight, scrounge, and swim) rated at 3, and several learned skills rated at 5. These reflect a character’s occupation, such as Cast (to cast spells), Heal, and, Investigate. The creation process again is simple; a player selects one of 20 templates and modifies it with six bonus points. These can be spent on skills or buying a single special ability, for example, Danger Sense or Technical Brilliance. The former gives a +2 bonus to all dodge attempts while the latter gives a +1 bonus to the fight skill. A single piece of equipment and a reputation, both of which again give a +1 bonus, finish the creation process.

Similarly the mechanics are simple. They are also diceless. To attempt an action, a player matches the appropriate skill, plus any bonuses from the situation, equipment, and special abilities against a target number set by the GM. If it exceeds the target number, the action is successful, if not, it fails. But through clever role-play, determining new information about an obstacle or problem, or using the correct tool, a +1 bonus can be gained which will turn a tied score (between skill and target number) into a successful action.

Combat works in a similar fashion, though with a slightly more detailed set of bonuses and penalties. Damage is equal to the amount that a combatant exceeds an opponents fight skill, modified by the damage bonus of the weaponry involved. All characters have ten points of health. Two or three blows from a sword will be enough to kill you.

Spell use is little different to this, and essentially spells can be cast by Magicians, Engineers, and Mathematicians. Where the first employs knowledge of rituals to cast, the latter two use their knowledge of science and mathematical formulae to achieve similar effects. Magic users use the Cast skill, engineers the Engineer skill, and mathematicians the Calculate skill. Some spells have been outlawed, so players will need the Forbidden Knowledge skill to learn them. Although, a player has plenty of spells to choose from, such as the evocatively named “Cissaro’s Gravitational Manipulation” and “Rain of Fiery Doom,” his character can only cast a number of spells equal to his skill.

Where Code of Unaris deviates from this simplicity is in the application of what it calls Hacks, or Story Hacks. A player starts with 20 of these and uses them to alter the in-game reality. He expends a hack to change something typed out by the GM, a word or an amount, thus:

 
GM: It was a dark and stormy night.

Player: Hack for a point. It was a dark and starry night.


Or


GM: Suddenly six Freyan Ice Gnomes leap down on you!

Player: Two-point hack. Make the six a two.

 
There are some limitations to using hacks. Some words are illegal, usually critical to the story or the setting. Further there is an in-game danger also. Hack to often and you come to the attention the Winter Warlock who unleashes a Watch Demon upon you.

Almost two thirds of the little book is given to the setting, evenly divided between the two time periods. This includes the history, the places, the peoples, the creatures, and the organizations, many of which are nicely illustrated. The artwork is quirky, particularly the maps of the Alfar Tower. Another quirk is the color; the book is not in black and white, but pine and white!

What Code of Unaris does not include is a scenario, and intentionally so. To support Code of Unaris’ on-line play, its scenarios also come in electronic format. This allows the GM to copy and paste text straight into the chat window instead of typing the descriptions out. The first scenario is available to download from the publisher’s website.

Part of the conceit of Code of Unaris is that players are meant to be playing themselves playing an online MUD or MUSH. This is inferred in the inclusion of the user details of many of Unaris’ major NPCs. These are perhaps a little cheesy, the inference being that two US politicians play on a regular basis -- one with a thick European accent and another, having retired four years ago. Also inferred is the fact that Unaris is the ultimate mythic age, the one from which humanity has drawn many of its names and legends.

As a chat rather than a table top RPG, Code of Unaris is a lighter affair. It is also a remote affair, players being present just in the chat window, so a game will take more dedication than a normal tabletop RPG. The light and diceless system makes Code of Unaris more of a storytelling game than a mechanistic game. The advice on chat play includes a handy guide to the lingo and simple advice. It suggests keeping a word document open to record notable dialogue and the like. That said Code of Unaris could be run as a tabletop RPG, preferably using a simple system.

Originally submitted as part of Wizards of the Coast’s d20 System campaign contest, Code of Unaris is the third of the entries to see publication. As a storytelling game, this version is the d20 System’s antonym, and proof that its’ setting is not dependent on mechanics. That said, the mechanics may be too simplistic for some and the concept of hacks too clumsy for others. But the setting remains both rich and interesting in itself, and the idea of being specifically designed to be played online in chat rooms is also novel.

---

Sounds great to me, Gary. I was going to suggest we run two sessions, one straight-up, based on the rules as written, and one were we mess around with things a bit and see what all us crazy indie game designers can do with a few of the cool ideas you develop in Unaris. Maybe it should be three sessions. We'll have to see what we can do. In any case, getting the opportunity to play Unaris with you sounds too good to pass up. Thursday works for me. How about Thursday evening, which would be Friday morning for me here in China? Do you want to play in your space or over on IRC where we usually hang out?

Sending the starter session would be great (jaywalt@gmail.com). Even if we end up improvizing, it'd be cool to have an adventure to riff on and just to see how you're imagining the game being run. The game rules seem to imply a larger degree of GM control than I'm used to nowadays, so I may have to adjust my play style a bit.

Also, I definitely plan to raid your site and Forge threads and reviews for things to quote for the article. Everyone will be given proper credit, of course. I'll see what I can do about working up a questionaire. Thanks again for being so responsive and helpful about this.

Hi Jonathan.

Excuse the "Ben" name mistake earlier. I'd just been reading a post by Ben before I typed one for you.

Can do an IRC chat. I have a channel on there called Unarischat which I rarely use. We can do it there.

I'm both an early bird and a night owl so can play at any time providing it's scheduled in advance.

How is 10PM CST on Friday? What does that make your time?

Gary

Jonathan Walton wrote:
A. Where you are on any material you may be working on.

B. What you need from the group (this is where you admit that you're lost or discouraged or can't get up the energy to write).

C. How soon you think it'll be ready for the next stage of the process (first draft, near-final, final).

D. A deadline that you can give yourself and stick too.

E. Anything else you want to ask about.

Option #1: Find Neel and get him to commit.
Option #2: Go with the wuxia game as Game of the Month.
Option #3: Find a new game (what?).
Option #4: Include Lexicon as it is and get somebody to write an article to go with it, talking about the game, its implications, and how people have used it so far.

So I've got a PDF of Unaris and a hankering to play it, but I need some people to play it with me and be willing to record their thoughts about it.

I think I shouldn't be the lead person on the Unaris article, since I'm up to my ears in arthouse wuxia. Does anyone here want to do it? If not, I might be able to recruit someone from the IRC crew to head up the project. We'll see.

Do we need to go find more people to submit or more content, possibly lesser-known, already-written content that can just be revised and published right away? I don't know how the first issue looks to you, but I was hoping for say 6-8 solid pieces, and it looks more like we'll have 4-5 right now. Any suggestions on people to ask or places to look? Most of the people I would have asked are, presumably, reading this thread. But maybe I need to go around sending out personal emails again.

Mike Pohjola is a great suggestion, Eero. Do you have contact information for him, or should I try to track him down? He's already a Forge member, as I recall, right?

(That reminds me, once I finish wuxia, I have to write an article on out-of-body larp potential for the big Nordic Con book...)

Speaking as editor, I think I'd rather just have one major contribution per person per issue, just to make sure that certain people don't overwhelm everything or bear all the burden. That's kinda why I'm backing away from the long introduction on Memory Houses and such. Combined with wuxia, that'd just be too much. Save your Finnish-language stuff for later issues.

I was expecting this journal project to start out being just a handful of people writing articles together, so I'm not worried about that aspect. I figure, once the first issue is out, it'll be easy to get more people to commit. So I think looking for a few more solid writers isn't a bad idea, even if it's someone to write a 5-8 page analysis of "why I like game X."

What's the rough deadline again? I think I'm probably on the shelf for this issue, though I'll be happy to do extra proofreading work. The things I'm working on right now are nowhere near publication readiness.

Well, I was originally planning for the journal to be out in November, but that's obviously not going to happen now. I'd say that we shoot for Final Drafts to roll in sometime in December and then try to proof and do layout in time for a January release. How's that sound, as a game plan?

Heya,

January publication sounds good. I'm getting close to what I'd consider a real first draft. I believe I can have it ready for review and editing by next week, possibly sooner. Where am I with it? A bit frustrated by how long it's taking me but still excited about the prospect. What could I use? Feedback like I've been getting. Some moral support.

best,
Emily

Geeze! Over a month with no posts to this forum! The holiday season must have stretched into a period of absolute lethergy and/or busyness (I know it did for me, on both accounts). Why don't we have another roll call to see where everybody is and what's up? Let me throw down a few questions to see where we want to come from here.

So:

1) If you're reading this and still interested in being involved, give us a yell back. If you've been hard at work on something, tell us what it is and where you stand on it.

2) One of the reasons I haven't been as active here as I should have been is because I'm just not reading the Forge as much as I used to be. It's gone from an everyday first-thing-in-the-morning thing to rarely-if-at-all. Some of you I know are in the same boat. I think this reflects a whole bunch of reasons, including the simple fact that internet-based communications schema are undergoing some shifts, and a major one happened when the Forge was at a low point for exciting content.

This brings up the question: is this the best place for us to continue to develop this project? Let's assume that it still is for now, but I'm open to entertaining suggestions, especially when we finish the first issue.

This isn't a question:

I think we really need to start throwing down content or this baby just isn't going to happen. We're going to run out of juice without other people commenting on what we've got so far and giving us ideas and the energy to finish. I just finished sending Shreyas a giant Word file of all the wuxia stuff that I've written so far, and I'm thinking it might be best to be straight up and post the contents or a link here for the world to see.

Two new ideas, tell me what you think:

A) a Content Ideas sticky, where people can just post things that they'd like to read about in PUSH, whether or not they are actually willing to write them personally. This way, people can browse that, find connections and themes that they can combine into an article, or use it as inspiration to write a "micro-article" of few paragraphs.

B) a Micro-Articles sticky, where people post articles of less than a page. These could include personal roleplaying experiences, brief thoughts about roleplaying, colorful microfiction to spice things, scripts from imaginary games, things like that. These would go through just as much editorial gauntleting as the real articles (maybe even more, since they're so short), so they wouldn't be fluff. They'd just be brief. Like what if you could read a carefully edited and amazingly high-quality blog community that submitted various things on the theme of roleplaying. I also see these as ways for people to get back into writing, or take a break from that long, evil, soul-destroying article that you've been working on.

Anyway, yell back. Let's finish this damn thing.

Jonathan Walton wrote: Geeze! Over a month with no posts to this forum! The holiday season must have stretched into a period of absolute lethergy and/or busyness (I know it did for me, on both accounts). Why don't we have another roll call to see where everybody is and what's up? Let me throw down a few questions to see where we want to come from here.

1) If you're reading this and still interested in being involved, give us a yell back. If you've been hard at work on something, tell us what it is and where you stand on it.

This brings up the question: is this the best place for us to continue to develop this project? Let's assume that it still is for now, but I'm open to entertaining suggestions, especially when we finish the first issue.

I think we really need to start throwing down content or this baby just isn't going to happen. We're going to run out of juice without other people commenting on what we've got so far and giving us ideas and the energy to finish. I just finished sending Shreyas a giant Word file of all the wuxia stuff that I've written so far, and I'm thinking it might be best to be straight up and post the contents or a link here for the world to see.

A) a Content Ideas sticky, where people can just post things that they'd like to read about in PUSH, whether or not they are actually willing to write them personally.

B) a Micro-Articles sticky, where people post articles of less than a page.

Eero, you rock. Just wanted to say that.

The great thing with working with all you people, actually, is I feel like any two of us could sit down and create the whole thing from scratch(assuming we had time) and it would be damn sweet.

More when I've had sleep.

Hey JW,

I'm finally where I want to be with my article, though it's still gonna take some time to write it out and revise. What am I up for otherwise or am into? Well, time's short and writing takes long, so I know this one's all I've got in me for now for the Mag.

And as for where I'm at with respect to theory: I've been reading anyway posts more than Forge ones lately but all this talk on the Forge and elsewhere about the current lull/need for entry materials for the Forge make me weep and yearn like nobody's business to do the d@mn roleplaying handbook project . As far as I can see (and I've said this before so forgive me repetition) there is so much good theory stuff that is already locked down but that needs to be more adequately communicated to others that that seems like the logical next step to be done before the next wave of innovation in design comes along. The glossary is a start, but many of these concepts really require articles (or more) to make them clear.

That's what I'd love to see back on the table.

yrs,
Em

edited to add:

Eero does rock, and so do you Jonathan. It's an honor to be working with y'all!

You know, I just remembered about Doyce's Random Wiki. That's a place for longer theory descriptions that exists right now.

A text though, will be invaluable. Maybe it can be an anthology made out of articles from Push, other mags, edited threads and other folk's blogs etc.

wishing,
Em

Well, I would be excited as hell to see the handbook project back on the table too. But I feel like putting PUSH #1 together first would be a good learning process for all of us and make the handbook project go smoother. Eero's the only one with game publishing experience and Chris & Rich are our source of journal-style background. I'd feel much better starting on the handbook if #1 was done.

However, I see no reason why we shouldn't draft an article or two in the first issue that outline the handbook project and recruit people to sign on for portions of it.

My idea for the PUSH #2 was to run a kind of Iron Chef thing (not a competition, just a sharing), where people submitted games/articles/etc. that were written as if we lived in an alternate history where roleplaying developed from something other than fantasy wargaming: cosplay, opera, improv theater, card games, computer games, religious rituals, choose your own adventure books, sports, conflict mediation, collaborative fiction writing, chat rooms, make-believe, masquerade balls, mating rituals, foreplay, business negotiations, international relations, statistical prediction, etc (Rich & I prophecized that Shreyas' entry would read something like: "In the land of Ukura, the Rikha and Sybarat peoples engage in theatrical competitions every year for the hand of the Sky-Dwelling Maiden, a beauty kidnapped from the plains kingdoms...").

In any case, I think that, with a good set-up so people know what our requirements and expectations are, issue #2 (to think pretty far ahead) should pretty much write itself. We just have to encourage people and work on our own submissions. None of this running-around-like-headless-chickens thing that I've gotten us into right now.

Anyway, it sounds like people want/need hard deadlines (or, in Emily's case, just a bit more time). We can go with that. This weekend is set aside totally for PUSH. Last weekend was figuring out what the hell I was doing with Vesperteen (don't worry, Eero; Ben knocked some sense into me and now we've got a sweet little dice mechanic that does everything I want and then some). I'll look over what everybody's committed themselves to and set down a set of deadlines for pulling us across the finish line.

Jonathan,

I'm still here, I'm still into it, even if I've been and become quite busy (why this post is short, today :-) I even have an idea for my submission to Push #2, which I think you're right about -- that issue should write itself. For Issue #1, I'm ready to give a read-through on the submissions.

And back to work with me,

Rich

I'm still in.

I'm with Emily, that I think the Roleplaying Handbook thing really needs to get written, but my only problem with PUSH #1 is that I don't have anything that seems to fit. The only thing is the "remarks on why I think theory is interesting" piece, which I could write up pretty quickly. And it wasn't clear to me that you wanted this for the issue, at least from me.

Anyway, I'm still in.

I'm here too. The outline for my article is coming together almost of its own accord.

Oh, and hey everyone else...

Thomas

My idea for the PUSH #2 was to run a kind of Iron Chef thing (not a competition, just a sharing), where people submitted games/articles/etc. that were written as if we lived in an alternate history where roleplaying developed from something other than fantasy wargaming...

And now I'm in too.

Jonathon just invited me yesterday, and I'm still looking around, trying to work out what's going on, so treat me like a Forge newbie as far as this forum is concerned--I'll try not to step on all the work you guys have been up to. (And for those of you who don't recognise me, I'm one of those long-time lurkers and occasional kibitzers.)

When Jonathon asked, I said I probably wasn't much use for anything but editorial work, so I was as I was looking over things I was mostly interested by the short pieces that you wanted to use to round out the issue.

Other than the fiction pieces, I'm not quite sure what you are looking for in them. However, I thought that the idea of talking a component of an rpg and PUSHing it a little further seemed interesting, whether it was a mechanic, a concept, a style of play, whatever.

In any case, I had a brain itch about Vincent's Otherkind Dice and so I threw something together, taking his dice mechanic and adding a frame onto it. It's basically written as a response to Jonathon's Anotherkind post in Actual Play. What it needs now is a discussion at the beginning about the original mechanic and the potential problems with it--the aspects of how it resolves situations that depend on unspoken social contract--as well as for me to ask Vincent if he would let me use his stuff.

Anyways, its probably a little big now, and it might be more appropriate for PUSH #2, but take a look and see what you think.

Jumping in with both feet,
Piers

Hi Piers,

Nice to see you here. But I thought you were one of those cultured Englishmen? How did you end up spelling Jonathan with an extra "o"?

Well, it could be worse. Some Brits spell it Jonothon, with all o's.

Or maybe he was named after (renowned English pseudo-countertenor) Peter Piers and was vocalizing it uniquely :)

Erm...

Now both of you are giving me that strange feeling where all my words are like stones my mouth. I'm getting a bad case of fake upper class accent which not only causes me to say 'Jonothon' but also 'Cress' instead of Chris. Ugh.

Please make it go away.