Author Archive: Jason Pitre

First Quickstart Bundle – NeoNihon

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As part of a Kickstarter stretch goal for the Spark RPG, I offered to prepare quick-start bundles of the game that people could print at home. These bundles would have pregenerated characters, a premade gm sheet and everything else needed to run a one-shot scenario with the book in hand.

The first one is ready for your enjoyment. Especially for those of you who might have just recently gotten their copies of the physical book. Just download the NeoNihon Quickstart Bundle

With luck, most people should either have their books in hand relatively soon. The vast majority of packages have shipped, and I will be hand-delivering many of the remainders at the two launch parties for Spark.

Cheers!

Spark is on the Way!

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I have been lax in updating the website, and I appologize for that. I have been working away at fulfilling the rewards for my Spark Kickstarter backers and the details involved in producing and shipping books has taken most of my time. In any case, I have sent out the vast majority of the rewards for my backers and you will soon be able to find copies of Spark from the retailers who backed me including….

Other than that, I intend on formally launching the Spark RPG to the public at GenCon 2013. I am eager to share it with the world, once my loyal kickstarter backers have had a chance to enjoy their copies of the book.

 

The Posthuman Doorways

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Here is my submission for the 2013 Game Chef contest. It was a great experience as usual, though I was under a heck of a crunch to produce this year. I am currently finalizing Spark in to fulfill my Kickstarter and, along with a convention last weekend, my time was at a premium.

While it could use a strong editing pass, I think the text expresses the underlying ideas well enough. I would love any feedback in the comments.

The Posthuman Doorways – GameChef

 

Edit: And apparantly I am a finalist for GameChef 2013. I am very surprised and equally pleased. Thanks for reading!

Free & Final Professional RPG’s for Game Designers

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I’m in the midst of layout for my game, and I was pleased to see the release of Always/Never/Now by Will Hindmarch. It’s part of a trend of excellent professional game designs that can be played by a gamer on a budget, or examined in detail by any budding designers out there. This blog post is meant to be a repository of sorts, with links to where you can find these gems. If you know of other professional games that should go on this list, add them in the comments!

 

Lady Blackbird

by John Harper of OneSeven Design. This is a Steampunk Fantasy, of magic wielding nobles, rogue airship captains and warp-blooded goblins. It’s one of the most elegant game designs I have seen, with remarkable amounts of rich setting detail crammed into a mere 16 pages. It won the 2010 ENnie Awards for best Free RPG, and deserved all the praise. You can find it over at http://www.onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/

 

Old School Hack

by Kirin Robinson. Take a classical Red Box version of D&D. Add in some of the best innovations from 4th Edition, story game principles, OSR expertise and excellent graphic design. It won the 2011 ENnie Awards for best Free RPG for a reason. http://www.oldschoolhack.net/

 

Mythender

by Ryan Macklin. It’s a roleplaying adventure game about stabbing gods in the face and falling to divine corruption. This is a crunchy, epic game with the best of modern design principles.  If you want to examine a game that creates a certain mood through the use of components/mechanics, take a look at Mythender.

http://ryanmacklin.com/mythender/

 

Archipelago III

by Matthijs Holter. This is one of the games inspired by the Nordic Larp tradition, and has some different divisions of GM responsibilities. If you like The Wizard of Earthsea or Fiasco, definitely take a look at this! http://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/archipelago-ii/

 

Always/Never/Now

by Will Hindmarch. Cyberpunk stories, based on the framework of Lady Blackbird and including some novel adventure-design mechanics worth your attention. Chock full of goodness and worth your while.     http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/114457/Always-Never-Now

 

Fate Core

by the folks at Evil Hat, will soon be available over at http://www.faterpg.com/

I know there are more out there, so please post the info in the comments and reshare this blogpost!

The Spark Kickstarter is complete!

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The first part of the Kickstarter campaign has closed. In some ways, this was the most exciting part of the process, seeing tangible support for my “little” game. It’s also been a little tiring, as if I was attending a very subdued month-long game convention. Overall, it’s been a blast thanks to all of the backers.

Now to business. We raised a total of $11,668, which means that I will be producing a number of things for all 475 of you.

  • PDF’s of the final version of the Game, both in “display” and “print” formats.
  • Epub and Mobi versions
  • Physical printed copies of the game, delivered to backers and chosen libraries/schools. d. Halfling Burrow Dice Bags
  • Human Keep Die Bags
  • Dragon’s Hoard Dice Bags
  • Extra payments for my editors and artists (Partially complete)
  • New cover art
  • A Quickstart Bundle for each of the three settings
  • The Digital Campfire MP3
  • A Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC BY)
  • An expanded, revised and potentially art-filled version of the “Spark in Fate Core” article of collaborative World Building.

That is a lot of stuff and I want to deliver as quickly as I can possibly manage without allowing the quality to suffer. It will apparently take about 2 weeks before all of the payments clear and before I am able to send the surveys out. At the end of the month, I will begin sending out the surveys to collect information, and I plan to prepare the final revision to the text so I can start the layout process at the beginning of May.

Exciting times!