Welcome and What's in the Pipeline (Part 1)

So welcome to my blog where I'll be charting the progress of my various game design projects and musing on game-related issues as they arise. I'm hoping to regularly discuss where my designs are at and the bumps in the road as I develop them for eventual publication. Please feel free to offer comments, advice, share war stories, etc.

Here are the first two of my current projects in development and where each is and what I'm thinking about it:

(1) The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries - The Pitch: You're a group of pulp heroes, each awesome in your abilities, just returned from an expedition into the unknown sitting with your peers of the Committee gathered around to hear your report. Brandy in hand, you tell tales of your exploits to gain the additional acclaim and reputation you need to achieve your hero's secret desire.

Originally my submission for 2006 Game Chef (see orginal version here), this storytelling game of pulp exploration is slated for spring 2007 publication (knock on wood). I'm currently deep in playtesting (see threads here and here) and after making the necessary rules changes after my latest playtest I'll be looking for outside playtesters to make sure everything hums.

I've been pleased with how the game plays so far, combining a rollicking Baron Munchausen-esque quality with crunchy resource allocation and narrative tricks. I think the balance between the two is working, but I am wary of creating a system that requires too much exacting knowledge before it energizes play. Play aids to ease the learning curve will be key. I'd really love them to have a pulp feel to further bring the players into the game (maybe parts of an expedition map or something).

I also want this to be a game where you can achieve full-on pulp-inspired awesome because you can narrate your character doing pretty much anything you can imagine to overcome the hazards you're presented with. You have to back it up with dice to actually overcome the obstacle, but the steps along the way are always entirely successful if you narrate them so - no whiffs, ands, or buts. I did see in the last playtest a time where the Opposition (the closest thing to a GM who frames adversity for a player and narrates complications during conflict resolution) negated a character's actions as part of a complication - this is a big no-no and I should have made that clear immediately.

Expect to hear a lot more about The Committee since it's my top-priority project.

(2) The Big House - The Pitch: Oz, The Shawshank Redemption, Prison Break. Prison is a place of high drama and high action, despite being enclosed within the same walls day-in and day-out. You've got people and things on the outside that inspire you to persevere and keep your nose clean, but the institution is trying to break you down or deepen your criminality. Which is gonna win out?

The original posts related to this game can be found here and here. This the only design that I didn't put together as part of a contest, and I think I'm ready to come back to it after The Committee and take it in a new direction. I want to add a collaborative setting and situation creation method and tie that to the existing structure that is focused on driving the characters to an endgame. The endgame is going to be individualized, allowing characters to come and go independently of each other (much like in Oz). I could also see PvP play emerging as players pick characters in rival gangs.

Writing the next version of the text is going to be very different than The Committee. I want to capture prison obscenity and slang in all its rawness, and fully integrate the language of prison into the rules text. I'm intrigued by Jonathan Walton's Push and Joshua A.C. Newman's Shock: and the sidebars they use as integral parts of the game text. Keeping a running glossary of prison slang in sidebars is a strong possibility.

So that's the top of my to-do list. Next post, my other two projects.