Roll Some Dice

OrcCon was the weekend before last, so I apologize for just now getting around to this. However, it's not for lack of enthusiasm -- the playtests of Leftovers went very well, and I'm psyched to get more going soon. I came back from the con with some great feedback and ideas that'll make the next version a better game. I also gave away four ashcan copies of the current version of the rules, and have received assurances that total strangers will playtest it in distant lands (like Utah!) and report back with their findings. The basic plot was this: One or more of the PCs has a younger relative named Suzanne, who uncharacteristically doesn't show up for dinner one evening in the Trench. Asking around reveals that she headed out into the Ruins by herself to find "something cool" and prove that she's old enough to be on her own. She's mischievous and cocky, so this comes as a disappointment but not a surprise. Of course, anything outside the Trench is so ...

So last night my ol' gaming group and me (plus one) did a brief playtest of Leftovers via Skype and Google Wave. This included character creation, which ended up taking way, way longer than I'd hoped -- but I chalk that up to having to mediate everything through our Internet interfaces. I wanted it to take 30 minutes; it ended up being more like two hours. This would be bad news for OrcCon this weekend, at which I intend to include chargen in each of the two 4-hour sessions, but I've made a character sheet that I think should sort out most of the confusion in advance. I know part of the problem was people rating their Traits, then later on finding out that, for example, if you don't rate your Violent Trait at all, you'll be terrible (and dead) in a fight. Personally, that's a feature, not a bug, but I don't want people getting screwed over by their lack of familiarity with the system. The character sheet has the formulae for the four derived stats (Physic...

So I didn't end up submitting this game by the contest's deadline. I just got too preoccupied with FATE stuff right smack-dab in the middle of the contest and didn't get around to it. Frankly, though, whatever. I've made enough progress that I'm going to see it through regardless. It strikes me as a great game for cons. The rules couldn't be much lighter, and the way the mechanics encourage -- nay, require a make-it-up-as-you-go approach seems ideally suited for a con one-shot. Once I'm done with it, I'll either put it on a wiki of some kind or get a rudimentary PDF put together for download.

I'll be running two sessions of Leftovers at OrcCon next month up in Los Angeles (I say "up in" like it isn't only 40 minutes away, but whatever), for anyone who might want to check it out. Here's the blurb for the game: Leftovers : Bell, Book, and Tentacle Suzanne may be young, but even she knows better than to leave the Trench by herself. There's no telling what might find her out there - - could be violence-crazed Grafters, unspeakable Horrors, or worse... the Order of St. Eurosia. Whatever it is, time's running out. This is an open playtest of Leftovers , a roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic survival in a horrific world -- but with a heart. Like I said, two sessions, one Friday the 12th at 8:00 pm, and the other Saturday the 13th at 9:00 am. Each session takes four players, and at this point will probably include character creation. The minigame of "How Horrific am I?" is a pretty important part of the game, so I don't want to cut ...

Hey, January's almost over! It's already the 25th, which means I have but a few days to get this Discovery game together if I want to submit it for that contest. I'm not especially worried about it, because there's so little to the game to begin with, and most of the big pieces are in place. Sure, combat needs some way to track damage, but that's a detail that can surely be worked out in the next few days. Right? (Disregard for the moment the total lack of playtesting. I know I am.) I've spent some time lately re-reading Agon and Beast Hunters , two games which have definitely had an influence on my thinking for this one, particularly with regards to putting the GM on a budget. In Agon , it's Strife; in Beast Hunters , Adversity. Regardless, the idea is the same: Limit the GM's resources, and, in the process, make him a sort of player too, in active opposition of the others. Each of these games goes about this in its own way, and with varying lev...

Hey ho there -- I've been a little FATE-crazy lately , but that doesn't mean that development on other games has stopped. In Leftovers , healing by conventional means isn't easy. It's a lot more reliable to cut something off a defeated Horror and stick it on yourself than to rely on the medical skills of your comrades. And the more Wounds you've taken, the harder it is to heal any of them. For example, if you've only taken 1 Wound, it's relatively simple to take care of it, but if you've taken 5 Wounds -- i.e., you're at death's door -- even healing one of them is a daunting task. Sticking on a Graft, though, auto-heals Wounds. The bigger the Graft, the more Wounds are healed. This is how people end up with Grafts against their will -- simply put, sometimes it's the only way to survive. The question is this: Since Grafts generally replace body parts like arms, legs, and eyes, how many Wounds does it take to actually lose an arm, leg, or...

So far we have two stats: Physical Potential and Mental Potential. The dice mechanic is probably going to be something along the lines of 2dX + Function (+ Specialty) vs. a target number. As arguably uninteresting and commonplace (from QUERP to Doctor Who!) as that mechanic is, it's ideal for two reasons. One, it's simple and accessible, especially if we're talking d6s. The premise doesn't really call for complex dice mechanics; instead, something straightforward just feels right for a game about discovery. Two, it meshes seamlessly and intuitively with the potential pools: Spend n potential on a roll and get a function of + n . It makes a lot more immediate sense than, say, adding dice to a pool or fiddling with a roll-under number. Plus, it works well with some other stuff below. Anyway, for the time being, let's make it 2d6. 4dF would work too, as would d6-d6, but I'd rather stick with all-positive results. Depending on how things shake out, 2d8 or even ...