Category Archives: Links

The Massive Microscope Hack

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Microscope, by Lame Mage Productions, is an amazing game.  It gives you all of the tools to create your own epic history, outlining the epochs and describing the events within. If there is one complaint, it is that the game only accommodates a max of 4 people per game session.  When I was running it at Games on Demand at GenCon 2012, I wanted to share the experience with more people than the game allowed, so I started to hack.

I dragged in a total of 7 other players to play a massive game of Microscope.  The eight of us came together with the broad concept and the palate of the game world. Once we had that determined, we created a total of three bookends.  We created the Start Period, the Climax Period and the End Period.

 

At that point, we split into two even sizes groups. Group A explored the span of time between the Start and the Climax, while group B explored what happened between the Climax and the End.  Both sides shared the Climax period and all of the Legacies.  Most importantly, we had sporadic communication between the two groups.  I asked the other group if they had established a particular important location, for example.  We also notified each other about facts that we had established about the world.

For scale, we ran an eight-person game of Microscope in 2 hours. I limited each group to two new Periods between their respective book-ends, and we were able to flesh things out beautifully. The only thing that would have made it better was a full 4 hour time slot, so we could explore the setting in more depth.

Hope you find this helpful! I will have some updated information on Spark shortly.

Dungeon World Alignment Moves

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I am a fan of Dungeon World as a member of the Adventurer’s Guild.  When I heard about the idea of “Alignment Moves”,  I was fascinated. D&D was the perfect game for alignments to have mechanical effects and moves seem ideal for this.  Since I couldn’t find any of these in the text of v 2.2 of the Beta, I wanted to post them here as a hack.  Dungeon World is by Sage Kobold productions and the following text is public domain.

 

Alignment Moves

When you are faced with a complex ethical or moral problem that impacts bystanders or society on a whole, Roll+ Wis. When acting on the solution provided, take +1 Forward.  Each alignment has it’s own move with different lists of items to choose from. On a 10+ choose two from your list. On a 7-9, choose one.

Lawful Good 

  • You uphold the greater good
  • You uphold the law
  • Give one of your allies +1 XP

Neutral Good

  • You uphold the greater good
  • You uphold the status quo
  • Give one of your allies +1 XP

Chaotic Good

  • You uphold the greater good
  • You uphold freedom
  • Give one of your allies +1 XP

Lawful Neutral

  • You uphold the balance of power.
  • You uphold the law
  • You gain a personal benefit

True Neutral 

  • You uphold the balance of power.
  • You are confident in your alignment.
  • You gain a personal benefit

Chaotic Neutral

  • You uphold the balance of power.
  • You uphold freedom
  • You gain a personal benefit

Lawful Evil

  • You increase your personal power
  • You uphold the law
  • You hurt an enemy indirectly

Neutral Evil 

  • You increase your personal power
  • You uphold the status quo
  • You hurt an enemy indirectly

Chaotic Evil

  • You increase your personal power
  • You cause anarchy
  • You hurt an enemy indirectly

 

 

GenCon 2011 Seminar Recordings

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One of my guilty pleasures at GenCon is to attend a variety of interesting game design panels with digital recorder in hand.  I was quite successful this year with 5 distinct seminar recordings.  I have done some rudimentary audio clean-up on the recordings but I currently lack the skill to properly polish them.   They are definitely worth a listen though, in my opinion I present the seminars in chronological order as I attended them.  I will try to link to the presenters websites whenever possible.

Things You Think About Games

Event Number: SEM1122700

Presenters: Jeff Tidball and Will Hindmarch from Gameplaywright (http://gameplaywright.net)

Things You Think About Games

 

The No-No’s of Game Design

Event Number: SEM1128758

Presenters:

Stan! (http://www.stannex.com/)

Jeff Neil Bellinger (http://killerbunnies.com)

Daniel Solis (http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com)

Matt Forbeck (http://www.forbeck.com)

 The No-No’s of Game Design

 

 

Lessons from Indie Publishing

Event Number: SEM1122904

Presenters: David A Hill Jr. from Machine Age Productions (http://machineageproductions.com)

Lessons from Indie Publishing

 

Design an RPG in an Hour

Event Number: SEM1122800

Presenters: David A Hill Jr. from Machine Age Productions (http://machineageproductions.com)

Design an RPG in an Hour

 

 

Game Design is Mind Control

Event Number: SEM1120297

Presenters:

Luke Crane (http://www.burningwheel.org)

Jared A Sorenson (http://memento-mori.com)

Game Design is Mind Control

 

The Legal Rules of Gaming

Event Number: SEM1118576

Presenters:  Neil A. Wehneman (http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/377)

The Legal Rules of Gaming

 

 

In addition to those excellent seminars, I also had the pleasure of running 2-3 playtests of the Spark RPG with some excellent gamers and/or designers.  I didn’t request permission to post those game sessions online from the participants, so I will not post those particular recordings.  I was told a couple of things by all of the different groups of playtesters.

  1.  I need to improve the presentation of the rules; teach them in a better fashion with more clear character sheets
  2. I should change the GM Fate tracking sheet into a variant of the normal player character sheet.
  3. It is counter-intuitive to have conditions which only help you or only impede you, regardless of circumstances.  I will consider changing this around, though I am uncertain how exactly that would affect the economy.

I hope the seminar recordings and I wish to thank all of the fine participants of GenCon who supported my playtesting endeavours.

 

GenCon 2010 Seminar Recordings can be found Here.

 

Amaranthine – The Chess Game Eternal

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So, Machine Age Productions will be releasing a brand new RPG at GenCon 2011 by the title of Amaranthine.  “Amaranthine is a game about yesterday, now, and forever. Amaranthine are immortal, destined to reincarnate from here until eternity. They’ve lived many lives before, and every other immortal they meet, they’ve met before.”

I pitched in on the Kickstarter drive and in honour of their release, I volunteered to produce a hack of the game system.   This is a hack of their resolution system, which replaces the dice with a chess board.  I hope some of you immortals enjoy playing the eternal game!

You can find it here and it is released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike License.  This hack was produced by Genesis of Legend Publishing, but I chose to cede all rights to Machine Age Productions

Amaranthine Chess Hack PDF

Have fun and feel free to leave a comment if you have any thoughts concerning the hack.

Bits and Mortar

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One of the announcements from GenCon 2010 is the new initiative by the name of Bits and Mortar. It’s an alliance of publishers who vow to provide PDF’s to any customers who buy their printed books. This maximizes the value of the books we produce and helps support friendly local game stores support themselves in the online world. I have submitted our application to join this alliance and you will be able to benefit from a full PDF guarantee. I hope you are as excited as I am about this initiative and support the cause.

http://www.bits-and-mortar.com/