Roll Some Dice

So while the esteemed Monsieur Walton has only gotten through 13 of this year's Game Chef entries so far, one Jonathan Lavallee has taken it upon himself to briefly review all 59 of 'em (including his own Over the Wall ). Not only that, he's already done it , and it's an interesting read. I was pleased to discover that Action City! made it into his folder of games he and his group may play one of these days (which, admittedly, contains about two-thirds of all the submissions). Does this bode well for my chances in Game Chef itself? Well, it doesn't bode poorly , I guess, but other than that one pretty obviously has no bearing on the other. To be honest, it was just gratifying to read someone else's thoughts on Action City! , contest or no. Thanks, Jon(athan)!

What with one thing and another, I've revised Action City! for anyone who wants to check out a slightly expanded, much more complete version of the game. You can get it here. At 14 pages (including a character sheet and a brief explanatory epilogue), it's a wee little slip of a game, but I like it. My only trouble is that I'm not sure I have the narrativist chops to give it the treatment it deserves in play. However, plenty of people do -- people I know, even! -- so hopefully someone out there will give it a shot.

I was going to say " Action City! -- Now Complete!" but I kinda doubt that's true. I put the finishing touches on it at about 4:00 this morning, so I'm sure something important is missing or incomplete. Like, if there's a sentence somewhere in those last few pages that just ends , period be damned, it wouldn't surprise me. So instead, I'll just say that you can take a look at it here .

I still question whether I'll be able to finish something in time for submission to Game Chef 2010: Sojourner -- I'm pretty busy with, of all things, writing a musical tribute to an old Top Secret module -- but... I'm gonna give it a shot. So here's what I'm going with: Action City! With an exclamation point! The goal is to recreate the most Hollywood action movies Hollywood could possibly come up with. Think Die Hard , Lethal Weapon , Bad Boys II -- even stuff like Escape From New York or Beverly Hills Cop . We're talking about movies that embrace (or invented) the most cliched of action-movie cliches. The heroes are one-dimensional badasses with a humanizing flaw, accompanied by some friends and/or hangers-on, up against crafty villains and seemingly insurmountable odds. Y'know. That kinda thing. I'm taking my inspiration as much from the movies themselves as I am from convention screenwriting wisdom. As for how all of that relates to the p...

So the ingredients for this year's Game Chef are up: The Basics Design and submit a playable draft of a roleplaying game between Sept 11th-19th, preferably inspired by the theme and ingredients listed below. 2010 Theme Game Chef 2010 is official known as Game Chef: Sojourner , and the theme is Journey . As always, you are free to interpret that however you like. 2010 Ingredients In addition to the overall theme, pick 3 of these 4 ingredients to design your game around. • City • Desert • Edge • Skin First thoughts: City, Edge, and Skin all jump out at me. I'm picturing a very scenario-focused game along the lines of The Mountain Witch or Lady Blackbird about accomplishing something very specific in a city. Probably getting from one place to another safely. More than that, though, I just can't say right now. Hell, something like Escape From New York or The Warriors isn't completely unreasonable. Second thoughts: Fred Hicks, Ryan Macklin, Willow P...

This is a little tardy, but: I've updated and renamed my swords & sorcery hack for Icons . Now it's called Sigils , at the suggestion of someone on RPG.net whose name escapes me. The big change for this version (v0.4) is the addition of rules for summoning and the detailing of three types of spirits, three types of demons, and 12 types of elementals (really, it's just three tiers of the same four elementals, but still). That was the big piece of the puzzle that was still missing, in my mind, so it's satisfying to have it taken care of for the time being. ("For the time being" because I haven't playtested those rules or anything, and I'm relatively sure I left out something very important somewhere or other.) Even though I haven't been able to play or run it yet, I can at least say that it's fun to roll up characters, so go check it out and get back to me. UPDATE: It's since been replaced by Sigils version 0.5 , and will soon ...

So! As I expressed elsewhere , this year's Gateway was an unfailingly fun convention. The least-fun game I played in was still a lot of fun, so I have no complaints. Plus, I tied for the win in a game of Dominion , which was notable primarily for how unlikely it was. I'll go in chronological order (Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon) so I don't leave anything out. Beyond Thunderbowl ( Leftovers ): I'd never run anything in the Friday 2:00 slot before, but with the 8:00 slot taken up by a game I didn't want to miss, I didn't have much of a choice. Thankfully, I had a full table -- an overfull table, actually. I advertised four slots and ended up with five players, including Leftovers fan and super-playtester Larry Harala , who's run a five-session Leftovers campaign with his group in Utah that sounds like a lot of fun and about which I'd like to hear more. Of course, since I only see him at these conventions twice a year, there isn't much...