Kitkowskiland!

So, Orie’s been making lots of Japanese friends lately, friends who are going to stick around the area indefinitely. She’s met up with Sayaka, Kazue and Akira a number of times and became fast friends with them. So, this kid of about 24 years old named Sho is staying with Akira and finishing up college at NCSU. The last time we met up, we talked about PS2 games (he’s into sports and driving, I’m into just about everything but sports and driving, but we both like horror and some console RPGs). I lent him Forbidden Siren 2 (one of the best horror games. EVAR) and the Taiko Tatsujin game.

Last Thursday, Sho and Akira and others came over for dinner. Sho brought Final Fantasy X International Edition (it’s the Japanese game, but with some extras, a new optional and totally different sphere grid, bigger badder side-bosses, etc). When folks left, for nostalgia’s sake (since I beat X few years back and sold it, as well as X-2), I popped it in to see what it was like.

I was sold in like 8 seconds. It was like a recovering addict stumbling into a drug den. My skin itched as those first few seconds of the song “To Zanarkand” played and the sad/reflective opening unfolded. Those few bars of that song made me forget

Chocobo Racing

Butterfly Collecting (never did complete it)

Dodging lightning 200 times

and that first Blitzball game.
Yep, the good I remembered drowned out all the crap. I found myself on eBay repurchasing the original Import/Japanese (language: The International versions are in English. And while some character’s voice actors are ok, I wanted the Real Deal) of Final Fantasy X and X-2. When Orie leaves for Japan in a week, I’ll be in a cycle of doing game writing/translation, work, and FF-X.

This time I’m going from start to finish. Going to take a shot at Omega. But I’m definitely up for collecting every single ultimate weapon and armor. Yep, even gonna give a good few hours at the butterflies.

I was telling Orie about this: FF-X and FF 12 were games that we both played together: Mostly me at the controls, but both watching the story unfold together.

We were comparing the two. I’m finding stuff that I really don’t dig about FF-X: The battle music and victory dance, while “historic” throughout the series, was way overdue to be put down. I like the 3-person battle system but I don’t like the “crash explode random encounter makes you jump out of your seat every 10 seconds” effect. In short, I wish there was a version of Final Fantasy X but with Final Fantasy 12’s superior real-time combat engine.

Also, FF-12 is quicker to “get into play”, fewer cutscenes and stuff in the beginning before you get to make meaningful choices. In FF-X, your first real meaningful direction where you steer the dude yourself comes like 40-90 minutes into the game. In that regards, 12 was better. If they knew then what they know now, the first scene in FF-X would be a random fishing boat getting attacked and destroyed by Sin, but you play the doomed (or Are They?) crew in the first fight of the game. Then the “real story” began.
But in all other regards, Final Fantasy X wins. The story is better. The visuals are more inspiring and fantastical. The whole thing has more flavor (mostly man-asian, southeast asian, etc). And mostly, the characters and their backstories are memorable. Even Orie knows the names of all the characters from FF-X. It took both of us a few minutes to remember the name of a single character from Final Fantasy 12 (Van. Later, actually as I typed this, I remembered “Ashe”. The rest, to me, are “Pigtail girl”, “Han Solo”, “Bunny Eared Serious Girl”, and “Good Twin”). I don’t remember like any single aspect of the story, save the bits about getting to Bunny Girl Village, parts about the Evil Twin, and the final battle. Milquetoast white fantasy with absolutely no teeth.

Maybe it’s because X was totally more Emo, about the sometimes-whiny protagonist with friend/family issues (who strives to overcome them! Wow!), and everyone with their own hangups (Wakka is prejudiced and his brother died, Lulu is pining for a dead lover, Khimari was exiled, Yuna’s a ball of doom, Auron is double-doomed, and Rikku… is… uh… too hot in that Al-Bhed hunting outfit).

In any case, FF-X is on the brain again, burning like an atomic coal. I’m putting off serious play on the International edition, instead waiting for the original Japanese language version to show up. And when it gets here, I realized I’m only going to play it a little until I finish more Tenra Bansho translation - and also tonight came to the decision that I will only play FF-X while simultaneously holding yoga positions (even minor ones), so that the experince isn’t a total wash of mind and body.

Anyway, here I go again. 80-120 hours of play over the next 3-5 months or so. No other game, not Persona 3, not even Shadow Hearts Covenant had that amount of hold over my psyche.

Today, Best Hunters came in the mail. I totally forgot that I ordered it a few weeks ago (right when it came out, with the PDF bundle).

I haven’t had time to read it, nor have I been particularly attentive to the development threads on it. I just thought that the concept was cool, and Christian (author) is a buddy, so that was good enough for me: I’ll definitely give it a shot sometime and post some play notes.

Anyway, the point is that this book is gorgeous. Simplistic, yet artistic, and a real sense of layout and placement. I think the last book that struck me this way was Burning Empires.

That Fred Hicks (the layout guy) really knows what he’s doing.

I’m not going to say “buy it!”, cause I don’t give recommendations without playing a game (or at least reading through it enough to know how to play), but I will say that if you DID buy it already or were going to buy it anyway, the book format will not disappoint you.

-Andy

So my buddy Clinton R Nixon (The “R” stands for “Indomitable”) is writing this game called “INUMA”, which is an Ainu word meaning “Treasure”. The game comes in a treasure box and has the following:

Three booklets: One tells you how to play the game, another tells you how to build a world, and the third is a directed scrapbook to detail your shared world and characters.

Glass beads, in several colors: Clear, Blue, Red and Yellow. About 25 each.

A bag to hold the beads.

A number of colored cubes: Two sides blue, two sides yellow, two sides red.

I won’t go into detail about the game itself (save that it was fun as hell), but the game has this setting creation element that is awesome.

Together everyone creates an equal number of Protagonists, Antagonists, and “Anchors” (people that fit in the middle: Important background characters with no direction towards either Good or Evil). When you play, there has to be at least one Protagonist, Antagonist and Anchor.  As you play the game, saying “Let’s get together and tell another story of The World of Anubis Sky” or whatever, you decide from your pool of characters which ones you want to play, who plays what, etc. Then you decide what aspects of the world/setting you’re going to focus on, and which elements from the setting are going to take center stage.

Every element of the character creation process was awesome, and then playing it out afterwards was magical.

If the idea of “True Story Game” is appealing to you, definitely check this one out when it comes out later (this year, IIRC). For me, it scratches some major gaming itches with roleplaying.

F: “Hi, we’re going to deliver your table this Saturday at 7:00PM”
A: “Awesome!  Will the fact that I’m not going to be there be a problem?” (At this point I was just f—ing with them, I know they come in and set it up and do the whole thing, so there’s no way it’ll work)
F: “Uh… Well, looks like the next time we’ll be out there is sometime between November 20th and December 2nd.  Will you be home then?”
A: (thinks about the fact that this is a two week range) “Uh, I think so”.
F: “OK, someone will call you back then to schedule a new delivery.”

Still not holding my breath on this. The last two times they were missing parts (the same parts), we’ll see about this time around. I’m not angry or frustrated or anything, because you get what you pay for: Extremely high-quality human-made furniture from FLS at “Cost plus a Few Bucks” price. It’s a great place and they really treat you right, and the furniture commonly arrives for most people within 3-6 months… they just need to do a slightly better job of meeting customer expectations.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll see it in before Presents Day.

Also, I was having an AWESOME case of buyer’s regret recently. I purchased a really slick as hell laptop for $1600 (list price before discounts was like $2100), and it’s basically going to be my primary work machine: Dual Core 2.0Ghz Pentium 4mb cache, 2 Gigs of memory, 7200RPM 100gb HD, 15.4 Cinema-style display (which I like more than “square” for the work I do) with ultra-high quality screen, yadda yadda yadda.  My budget plans were $1000-1400, so I went over a bit, a lot even. Last time I had buyer’s regret like this was, thinking hard on it, almost exactly 10 years ago when I bought a laptop right before I went to Japan (Intel P2, 128 Hard Megs of RAM, 3 GB hard disk for all storage needs, etc) and that was like $2500 or something IIRC.

Anyway, I got this monstered out because for the work-work that I do (the tech side, not the web/translation/writing and hobby stuff) I basically need it to run VMWare with like 4 concurrent OSes running at the same time (the native Win XP Pro, plus 1 RH Linux server, 2 Windows 2003 Enterprise servers, and 1 Ubuntu host), so we’ll see if it can handle this load.

The sad thing is that the laptop should arrive before the table.

Also in the news, Orie gets back next Wednesday. Also, this weekend I will go to the MACE convention over in High Point. Literally the night they were set to deliver my table, I won’t be at home but I’ll be like 5 minutes away from FLS. Irony. Anyway, the saga continues.

-Andy

November 10-12, High Point NC ( http://www.justusproductions.com/Mace.aspx ). I’m basically aiming at the folks that are reading this LJ here, especially the far out-of-towners like Rob/Fred/Adam/etc, but looking for local folks as well.

Here’s the thing: This week I’m making the hotel reservations. One room, two beds, I get a bed, don’t mind sharing but if you snore you’re on the floor. :-)  (I use Breathe-Rite strips, etc, so no snoring on my part).

Last year I drove to the con. That was… a little more painful than I expected.  This year I’m getting a room for Friday and Saturday. As many people are welcome as want to stay. As far as I know, Jason M is rooming with me on Saturday. That’s all I know sofar. Who else is coming, and hasn’t gotten a room yet?

Thanks!

-Andy

What’s new… Still working on translating Tenra Bansho Zero, and things are starting to reach a critical mass: In seven days I should have most of the translations that I contracted out.  After that, it will probably take me one month to put together the rules sections and the other untranslated bits, and prepare to fill in the gaps with explanations and the like.

Last week I picked up the PS2 game “OKAMI”, and at eight hours in it’s blowing my mind.  It’s a perfect evolution of ZELDA: An action game with a story that focuses mostly on puzzles and less on fighting (though there is quite a bit).  It’s made by Clover studios, who did the Viewtiful Joe series and other interesting concept games (GOD HAND, etc). Basically, in this game you’re the reincarnation of the Goddess Amaterasu in the form of a wolf, and with a small insect companion you travel Japan bringing back life to the countryside. I think the thing that I like most about the game is that you get all of your “leveling up” power from healing the world. You restore sick trees, you give food to bunnies and pigs, you transform entire landscapes from cursed fields to lush pastures.  It’s really an awesome feeling to see how the world changes in response to the good things you did.

THere’s lots of little Zelda-like powerups and the like, in that you will see a magical-looking rock or tree or something early on, and think, “Oh, I bet later on I’ll get some trick that I can use to manipulate that thing”… then sure enough, sooner or later you get some item (in Zelda, you get various pieces of equipment: Hook shot, time ocarina, boomerang, etc; In Okami you get magical brush-strokes which you use Nintendo DS style (writing on the screen) to do various magical effects like blow winds or make the sun come out). Just like Zelda, I’m hooked on this thing and it’s really hard to stop playing- Once you get the “Water sprout” power, for instance, you’ll want to go back to all those water sprouts you remember and try to activate them, etc.

Back to Tenra for a second: On Saturday I ran another session of the game, and again it went well: Some things happened that made me think about reworking bits of the Harmony Coin/Aiki Chit distribution mechanic, but looking back into the text, it reminded me what the game is supposed to be about, and why it works the way it is.  Still though, there’s always room for optional rules.

More later on my personal life stuff, but for now I wanted to drop word on this PS2 game: It in fact is awesome, and if you’re waffling on whether to buy it or not, I highly suggest picking it up.

Shinobido Imashime, probably the best Ninja-themed console game ever, is not going to have a North America release.  It came out in Europe, and that’s the closest it’ll get apparently. Poo.

Tenchu… uh… 5? Is on its way out. but it doesn’t look like anything new really. I loved some of the series (1 and 3 especially) so I’ll pick it up eventually, but still.

On the other hand, GOD HAND is going to have a US release.

I don’t know much about this game, but I know what I like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC2MvIC4j6E&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozh9wmGMJeY&mode=related&search=

I ran it in English for the first time ever today. It was a mess of fun, and surprised me in unexpected ways. I’ll have more info on it later from the Tenra Development Blog.

Posted to the dread-rpg Yahoogroup today:

I’m really sorry about not posting more often.  I wound up getting a job as a video game writer/designer shortly after the publication of Dread, and other than a few PDF supplements, I didn’t make much time for the game.

-Rafael

Very cool news.  As y’all might know, Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium, while it had its rules flaws and the like, was pretty much one of the coolest, most rock-solid (in terms of creepiness and direction) horror games ever produced.

It was also a huge influence on my own The Ghost Killers, which is pretty much “The feel of Dread with different rules and a different backstory”. I was nervous for a second there actually hearing of Dread’s rebirth (because the impetus for me to start writing it was “Dread is Dead and that style of play needs to come back”, but Dread is slick enough, and TGK’s focus is different enough, that there’s no stepping on toes.
Feel these nipples!

I have Keith Sen|owski’s untitled here in my hands. I haven’t gotten through the whole thing yet (it will be a while0, and haven’t gotten through the CD yet, but it’s pretty slick. Game-as-art. I’ll have a realistic review of it eventually after the Honeymoon stage is over (I don’t want to give people wrong impressions and the like). If you ever watched SE7EN in that scene where Morgan Freeman is looking through the killer’s notebooks, and thought to yourself, “Man, I’d pay $5 to take a peek at those journals”, this may be the game you were looking for.

Also, thanks to the help of my awesome dad this last weekend, we got the ceiling fan from the guest bedroom upstairs brought down into the dining room where it is much needed (for some reason air just does not circulate well in there naturally). One step closer to Ultimate Gaming Room. Inshallah, the new Gaming Dining Table will be here this week. Hopefully in time for Wednesday’s Burning Wheel game, but if not that’s ok, it’ll be there by next episode.

What else… hmmm…

Still exercising. I’m now doing walking 1-2 times a week (approx 5 miles). I haven’t done DDR for a while, nor Power Yoga, but I’m doing the EMBARRASING (but demonstrably successful) “Turbo Jam” workout that I picked up for a third of the list price on eBay. In college, I used to go with my friends out to the gay bar at least twice a week in Green Bay, because not only was Za’s (the club) the best place for mixed drinks in the area, it had incredible music and awesome people; but make no mistake, it was very mucha gay bar, complete with “transsexual olympics” every Sunday night. Turbo Jam is like 2.3 times gayer than Za’s. BUT, now I’ve got this weird feeling in my stomach these days, and I came to the realization after a day or two that… Oh My God… Those are MUSCLES down there underneath six years of sloth! And they’re trying to get out, but ever so fragile and slow, like watermelon seeds buried in a sandbox. I do Turbo Jam 4-5 times a week (there’s a scheduled ‘program’ to follow for max results, and I’m trying to follow those as much as possible).

Finally, I got this computer program called “Yourself! Fitness” which basically creates workout programs for you on the fly. I’m loving it for mixed cardio and step-exercises and handweights. The 3d CG character is a little too robotic for my tastes at times, but the workouts are solid. I do this about 2-3 times a week.

That’s about it. This week I work Mon-Wed (but doing work training, so it’s pretty light compared to my normal work schedule), then I have Thurs-Fri off; Then I work Saturday, and have Sun-Tuesday off. That’s a lot of time to fix broken stuff around the house, update websites, push more game translation (Tenra Bansho), and maybe finish up another gaming thing of my own.

i ask because i care

It looks like our new Gaming Dining Table is expected in at Furnitureland South* in just one more week or so.  That means we should have it in our house in the next 2 weeks or so, inshallah.

We quiver in anticipation for that fateful day. The Gaming Dining Table will rule the world. Just wait and see.

* Furnitureland South is the largest furniture showroom on the planet, about 70 minutes from my house, and it is an incredible place. They only take cash or check (no credit cards), but their inventory is MADE as you purchase it from the original hand-maker manufacturers, and costs just a fraction above cost, which means you pay about half list price on anything. People fly here from all over the world.

Yes, it’s my third blog post in a day. I’ve got a lot of coffee in me, tomorrow I have off, and I’ve got a lot on my mental plate.

Anyway, I’ve had this game cooped up in my brain and just needed to get some things out “on paper”. So it’s more for my edification, so there’s no real directed questions, but if you have an opinion (even, “this sucks”) feel free to chime in, though don’t feel you need to.

I’m assuming if you’re reading this that you’re familiar with The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton “All A’s and a B. AWESOME job buddy!” Nixon. If not, then feel free to tune out cause you probably won’t understand (most of my posts are for everyone, but this is specifically for my gaming buddies). So I mentioned elsewhere that The Shadow of Yesterday is my fantasy game of choice (system-wise). It’s white hot. My weekly gaming group played (both versions of) it for about a full year, maybe a little more.

I’ve been having a lot of issues recently with the Fudge Dice. Namely this aspect:

Bringing Down the Pain. Usually gonna involve lots of die rolls. What happens is that with Fudge dice there are a lot of ties. A lot of rerolling to get that +1 advantage. Without switching to an ability (or using boosts, secrets etc that give you a huge advantage) it takes a while.

That’s pretty much my only issue, but it makes me long for the simplicity of numbers, without the “steps” bit from the original game (borrowed from Eden’s house system IIRC). I think I might have come up with a middle ground between both editions, in a way that:

1) Keeps things simple (no extra charts for “steps”).
2) Makes BDTP go faster, in a way that’s still exciting.
3) Adds that fun granularity of smaller numbers over Fudge’s longer steps (note: I’ve loved the Fudge system forever, and don’t usually think much of the “granularity” factor- It normally totally works, but for BDTP it’s personally gotten in the way sometimes).
4) Opens up cool, fun new avenues to wonk around with the nuts and bolts. New ways to create bonuses and disadvantages, basically.
5) I always think of Penalty dice after the player is like halfway in the middle of rolling dice, which is a big problem for me, because in the current TSOY you really have to have that all sorted out from the beginning before you roll dice (as penalties cancel out bonuses, and vice versa). That, again, is an Andy Issue but it turns out I’ve been able to address it in the rules to make a more Andy-rocking version.

OK, long prelude aside. It’s pretty simple: For every roll, you roll 3d4, preferably on those Crystal Caste bones-looking dice (because they’re more elegant IMO than the ‘ol Caltrop).

Then, every time you get a “Bonus Die” in original TSOY, you simply increase the die size of one or more of those 3d4. Like, if you get two “Bonus Dice”, you can roll either 2d4 and 1d8 (1d4 to 1d6 to 1d8) or 2d6+1d4. The max is 1d10. Therefore if for some reason all the stars align, you get full support from buddies, all your secrets max out, you can get up to 3d10 to roll.

Every time you get a penaly die, someone else (GM or opposing player) rolls a 1d4 against you. If you get more penalty dice from circumstances (max 2 penalty dice, just like the rules) or from opponents (they may have secrets that don’t give them bonuses, but rather give others penalties; or they can simply decide to spend their bonus dice to exchange them for opponent penalty dice), you can increase the number of d4s rolled or their die step: 3 penalty dice become 3d4, or 1d6+2d4, etc. (For sake of fun, I might institute a rule something like “To give a 1d8 as a penalty die they must have at least 5 penalties stacked against them; To give 1d10 as a penalty they must have 8 penalties stacked against them; However this will require playtesting to make sure).

…and that’s about it. Here are other things I have sorted out:

1) This system opens up all sorts of new avenues for funky Secrets. Some secrets can give you bonus dice. Some can give you TWO. Some only give the opponent penalty dice. Some may influence the way you get to stack dice (”Any time you roll “2d6″ you get a +3 to the result” or somesuch). Some may just bypass the bonus die thing altogether (”+2 to any roll involving X”. Kinda like how “weapons” work).

2) Skills start at +1 and go up to 9, where 10 still equals transcendent. That way it sticks to the original design goal of “on a good day, the underdog rolling no bonus dice still has that chance of beating the grandmaster on a good roll” (3d4 with a +1 in skill = 13 max, 3d10 at its lowest is “3″, plus 9 skill = 12. Almost impossibly improbable, but it’s still there, just like the original and revised). With this, though, the experience/advance system will need reworking.
Here’s what I’m waffling on:

1) How damage works. I really, REALLY love the original TSOY’s “hit points” system, but love the new system’s way of splitting it across the three pools. I may end up with a hybrid of hit points and wound levels.

2) The target number for actions. Probably gonna be 7. Another part of me just wants instead to have every action (even against “no antagonist”, like “I climb the wall”) be resisted by an opposing 3d4. I’m thinking of saying that Every Obstacle can have the pain brought down upon. Each obstacle would get a simple rating that the GM can keep in her head: like “Cliff Wall? Sure, that’s 3d4, 1 penalty die because it’s raining. And it has 5 ‘POWER’. and ‘1 DAMAGE’ ” So if the player beats it in one roll, they can simply climb it. If they fail, then can stop. But if they really want to push, they
take damage, and the 5 POWER becomes the cliff’s “hit points”. The GM or opponent takes the role of the obstacle almost as an animistic thing (”You’re buffeted against the cliff face as the rains fall, the handholds you saw before just aren’t there anymore. This cliff is out to boot you off of its face. Do you press on or retreat?”).

3) Adding more crap. I’ve been thinking of perhaps making a modular Pool system (changes per campaign, but there’s a solid list of examples). Been thinking of creating a new fantasy setting to tie TSOY: Power In Numbers to, and from there add more crap (a new mechanic for relationships, or a new category for bonus dice based on your personality or other HeroQuest-like adjectives), etc. I might leave an opening for New Crap, some up with some New Crap on my own, and encourage others to make up their own. I’d leave a gap in the character sheet for people to paste in their own New Crap or whatever.

… hmmm. That’s all for now, I guess. More later after I give it a whirl with some pre-gens.

Seriously. I said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Your awesome games are simply too much for me to continue to bear. They are costing a lot of money, but more than that, they are simply too much to even consider playing all of them.

Jason M hooked me up with the games I asked him to pick me up fron GenCon, and I’ve got a small pile of fully-playable, gorgeous (in either layout/graphics, or design/purpose) games. And from hearing folks’ playtest reports, I have to now buy even more, to basically buy all the games I didn’t buy at GenCon.

I thought it had finally come to the point where the indie game crowd was making such a variety of games where I would say, “OK, I have to stop buying Everything. I have to instead carefully look at what’s out there, and decide if this game is absolutely something that I’d be interested in trying. The games are too varied to pick up everything and hope that I’d be interested in them all.”

Unfortunately, I’m interested in them all. Well, most of them anyway. From the trad play with indie sprinkles of “Cold City” to the groovy hippiness of Shooting the Moon, there’s maybe like 3-5 Forge Booth/indie games that came out out that I’m just plain not interested in.

This is the golden age of gaming.  It’s too golden, though. I’m suffering under its gorgeous weight.

Here’s what Jason got for me (among other doo-dads):

Burning Empires. The Brick. It is not only a gorgeous RPG, it is also a handheld weapon. I’m really not too into the crunchy stuff, but I’m clearing my plate to dig into some crunchy prime rib here.

Contenders. This is one that Jason picked up for me (I asked him to “nab anything that really jumped out at you”). It’s a game about boxing and hope. Basically what the boxers fight for: family, love etc. Looking forward to throwing down this one, maybe with my dad.

Mortal Coil. A gorgeous game, diceless, about magic (and how it works). As Jason pointed out, it is one of the two games in the set that features “man-junk”, which will be the new standard of an RPG’s worthiness.

AGON. Agon is about Greek Warriors who fight stuff. The book stabbed me in the neck with a Javelin when I picked it up. It looks like some serious awesome.

The Dictionary of Mu. Judd’s Sorcerer supplement, the second game featuring “man-junk”. It totally blew away my expectations in terms of layout and presentation. It looks like TRIBE 8 got in a fistfight with HOL and this game emerged. It’s very non-linear, though. The game itself is described almost entirely in this random-setting style which is kinda hard to get used to (mainly because the fonts aren’t as easy to read at a glance). Because of the planned disorganization, which is cool on its own, it makes it a little harder to get the main points of the setting down.

However. I used to be a setting junkie back in high school and college, but these days I get bored soooo quickly when reading setting pieces.  Like, almost immediately. Tell me how many people live in Town X, and I’ll skip ten pages ahead. Dictionary of Mu doesn’t do any of that crap. It takes a little bit to get through, but I think the crazy moon-setting underneath is worth it.

Panty Explosion. This is the only game I got on a whim. I am iffy on the ideas behind the game itself, but it features Japan (namely Japanese schoolgirls, who are bitchy and psychic) so I had to pick it up. This is probably the lowest on the “must play” scale of the above, but I will if I have a chance.

Mob Justice. This is the game that Iain McAllister came up with last year. He had in his mind a game about brotherhood, betrayal, and justice. But last year, the rules were all about shooting things and chasing things in cars. Then a couple of designers got to him and got him to rethink his game: “If the game is about brotherhood and betrayal, why isn’t that in the rules instead of this car chase crap?” So Iain redid the game completely, and I’m interested in giving it a shot. There are rules for a Yakuza setting, I might roll with that.

QIN: The Warring States. “Oh great”, I thought, “another trad game set in China”. I decided to pick it up anyway, as my success with other recent China-themed games hasn’t pulled through. Turns out that Qin is pretty impressive in its simplicity. The rules are evocative without being too complicated. There’s a lot of setting stuff so you don’t have to go, “OK, you go to a tavern. Uh… hmmm… what would an ancient Chinese tavern be like, anyway? Hmmm…” It’s solid, and the production value is high, so it’s going on my must play list for this year.

That’s all, but not for long. Tomorrow I’m sending Keith S a check for his work untitled, which I’ve been excited about for months, and this week I’m putting in an excessive order at IPR to pick up, effectively, every other new Forge Booth game that I didn’t happen to buy.
Exciting gaming lies ahead.

So my brain has been a whirl recently. Work (real work) is busy as heck, as we’re currently at about half the staff levels we need to be. But with the whole GenCon thing going on, my thoughts have again turned to gaming.

Here’s a quick status of Tenra Bansho, that game I’m translating for release into English. It’s coming along fine. The last of the translations will be complete in September, after which begins the slow, painful editing process. It’s during that time when we’ll be adding the New Text to the game. New background, New setting explanation, New rules, Name lists, Microfiction, that sort of thing. Early next year is DTP and layout, and late spring come printing and publishing. I’m fully expecting the game to be ready by GenCon 2007 if all goes well at these early stages.

Speaking of which, I posted an enthusiastic post about the thing over on the Tenra developers journal here: http://www.tenra-rpg.com (follow the blog link in the text section). As we get closer to the game’s release, we’ll be leaking more and more information about the game. Next I expect to upload a sample character or two.

Anyway, it’s hard to keep doing this when my brain is firing off impulses and storms about my own games that I’m trying to develop myself- Where I have to push those thoughts down until later, or Tenra will simply never come out in time. But I’m taking some of that creative energy into reworking the Tenra rules. For the most part, they’ll stand as they are. However, there are some areas that will simply have to be rewritten for clarity, others revised because in the intervening 7-10 years since these revolutionary rules were made in Japan, over in the US we’ve found some ways to do the same thing, but cooler or easier (some scene framing; getting rid of needless dice rolls; setting stakes in conflicts; making “singing” and “leadership” do damage, just as swords do (to the spirit rather than the body), to make the rules-y parts of the game be used for more than simple combat, etc).

Anyway, I’m putting together a playtest package right now. I expect to have it done within a week, and from there I’ll be running around the area running sessions of it to further understand and refine the game (and test out alternate rules).

That’s what my creative brain has been up to recently.