okay, a quick post of an update. i have a friend of mine hosting the .pdf file of what i have doen so far for Criminal Element. it is lacking a real go-over from an editor and major chunks of game text, like the genre expectation stuff that i'll be writing into the game as well as the different health levels. it does have some graphics in it, some of which will be the final graphics like the new front cover, other stuff was just stolen from magazine photos and the like. please be gentle... ;-)

also, i'll ask you guys to check out my friend's website, the host of CE. he's a great digital artist and if any of you guys could use a guy like him or me to do some work for you, we're both college students and come real cheap!

the link for CE is www.fluidoptics.com/criminalelement.html

and the link for my friend's website is www.fluidoptics.com

enjoy, have fun!

laters,

-m

I'll be on it Monday, Michael. Be ready for chainsaw action.

Also, I am very very concerned about further design of this game without you actually playing it. I have seen multiple instances of games being buried under wads of excessive rules and/or genre conventions due to this.

Best,
Ron

i have now been able to play the game these past two evenings with two of my regular gamers and have had a blast with it. the basics of the game seem to work pretty well by me and my group but i have yet to have any collapses and such come up in play.

ron, i understand your concerns. as a gamer myself for something like fifteen years i have seen plenty of games with excellent premises collapse under the weight of their own rules systems, a fate i am desperately trying to avoid with CE. like i've said before, this is my first attempt at writing a game and i honestly have no clue what i'm doing. i've had planty of home-brews before, but nothing that ever got to the point to be presented publicly. i'm trying to keep my rules as sparse as possible, covering the basics and leaving the rest up to the playing group to add their own style to the game. the things that i find myself most concerned about right now are the clarification of collapse rules, the drama points section, including betting DPs on actions, and establishing genre convention. any assistance that any of you guys out there can supply for me would be greatly appreciated. right now, all of the written material in the PDF file is still just stuff that has fallen out of my head and onto the page, no editing or anything. i'm expecting to do a large amount of cutting and altering to make the suit fit better, i just need to know that the raw cloth is right, if you follow.

laters,

-m