Chapter One: World/Authority creation
This is the first draft of the first chapter/article* for Misspent Youth. Have at it! Enjoy! Commentary is welcome but realize this went from my fingertips to the site without even a single review.
* The layout in the book is going to be like a punk zine.
On Development
This is an idea I’ve been infected with for some time now, and while I’ve talked about it with Ryan, Rich’s question about it here makes me realize I should unpack it a bit.
GMT Games, which publishes some of my historical war games, has process they follow for producing games, and I’ve stolen most of this idea from them. They don’t have any in-house designers; everyone except the warehouse staff and a few marketing-role folks are freelance. Designers will approach them with prototypes to see if they want to publish the game. If they do, they assign a developer, who is responsible for working with the designer, the art director, and anyone else necessary to deliver the final component specs to the printer. In a very real sense, the developer is responsible for turning the design into a game.
So what happens during development? Well, there’s already been playtesting done to the prototype, and the core design is solid (otherwise GMT wouldn’t have taken it on), but further playtesting takes place during the development phase to iron out ambiguities in the rules text. In some cases, parts of the design are streamlined or eliminated to make the game play faster or reduce complexity. Art is acquired. Component lists are finalized (and game play is potentially changed because of component cost). The game is distilled from idea to product.
How is this relevant to what we do? I think we need to be mindful of an intermediate stage between design and publication. Designing is where you hash out those big ideas and figure out what the game is about and how it works. Publishing is where you finally print, market, and sell the thing. There’s a lot of ground in between those two, and what I’m doing right now is a distinct activity from either of those points.
I will note that if you’re not planning on publishing your game (by which I mean charge people money for it), development isn’t as necessary.
I used to work for a software company that I described this way: “We build great technology, but we make terrible products.” In the gaming world, I see development as the process by which we bridge that gap.
Betrayal at the shadows over whatever!
I can’t believe it took me this long to realize this: in Outside Men, instead of having players choose their membership in either the ALIVE or DEAD team, it should be determined for them by the mechanics! And not immediately, but over the course of a campaign. (This may require some prohibitions, a la Dirty Secrets, on what you can narrate conclusively about your character.)
I credit Jason Morningstar with inspiring me here again, with his recent posts about a design in progress (I might link that when story-games.com is running less slowly) that is almost more Shadows Over Camelot and Betrayal at House on the Hill than it is an RPG. I think I like the Betrayal at House on the Hill method better for the Outside Men context – rather than a player knowing from the beginning that his or her character is a turncoat, the rules will reveal it at some point in the middle of the game. Whether I will go for Betrayal’s thing of making the change public, I don’t know.
Also I need to write some more of the story into the rules. Infiltration should be the name of the game, and all of the interpersonal effects that come with it – loss of your social network when you go into deep cover, increasing loss of your clarity of self and of identity. Spione does a bit of this, but it is not so explicitly about the PCs having multiple identities… just multiple lives of a certain kind.
Can anyone else think of game mechanics about double agentry and/or secret traitors? I’m not looking specifically for mechanics that would fit the tone and story of Outside Men just yet… just looking for ideas.
Why the Rush to GenCon?
I think this might be worth dialoging about. Here are my thoughts.
GenCon is arguably the biggest gaming convention of the year. Having a new game there means a huge amount of exposure and possible sales.
However, I think it’s easy for any given product to get lost in the sea of new products. Even if you’re running demos at your booth (Ashcan Front, Play Collective, Forge/IPR, whatever), it’s still hard to grab people and translate that into sales.
And are sales even what we’re aiming for? I know that there are folks, like Paul Czege, who are more interested in purchases translating into actual play than purchases translating into profit or fame. I know I’m not doing this for money – or even fame. (I’ll detail my reasons along with my alternate Big Three Questions post.)
Assuming things kick into high gear, the earliest I’d consider releasing Seiyuu would be Dreamation 2009. I think, if you want to aim for a convention for release, Dreamation is actually better – there’s a lot of indie presence there, especially via the IPR booth. I realize this doesn’t work well for west coast folks, but I suspect there is something similar – doesn’t Endgame have something?
Even if Dreamation 2009 doesn’t work out, I’m not just considering a convention for my release schedule. Just look at Spirit of the Century – it came out a few months after GenCon and had no real convention tie-in.
How do the rest of you view a GenCon release or aiming your release for a major convention?
