Category Archives: community

I Am LOLBAT’s Sidekick.

By day, I’m mild-mannered game and graphic designer Joshua A.C. Newman. But by night… by night I don a disguise as reasonable as Superman’s and I become…
@JoshuaACNewman!
I post there when a comment doesn’t warrant a blog post.
Not that this warranted a blog post.

Game Design Studio: Doors (forced) Open!

I forgot to open up the doors to the Game Design Studio, but young rowdies are already cramming in there, helping each other, so who am I to stop them? If you’ve got something to submit, read the How to Critique post, and join the rest of the class!

Shock:Retroactive Bundle with Human Contact

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to do this before: if you own Shock:, send an email to humancontactbundle@glyphpress.com and I’ll send you freed PDFs of the two Human Contact preview editions, both the January one I made for Dreamation and the March one I made for PAX East!
Human Contact is inspired [...]

Human Contact Summer Reading List

I’ve read a good number of books leading up to the creation of Human Contact. They’re all about the challenges of interacting between cultures. If you like these books, you’ll probably like the game!

The Telling, by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Left Hand of Darkness, ibid.
The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
Use of Weapons, ibid.
Foundation, Isaac [...]

The Jank Casters get Shock:ed

The Jank Cast crew played Shock: and really dug it. Their game was Human Cloning vs. Aging and Reproduction. It got good and gnarly.
After Granther torturing Granther torturing Granther, I kinda needed a shower.
—Todd
Brilliant scene there, guys. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Geek Nights Love Shock:

At Recess two weekends back, I had a chance to play Shock: with Terry Romero, Max Kushner, and Scott and Rym of Geek Nights. They just did a review and man, they totally get the game. Scott ordered it yesterday and I think they’ll have a really good time with it. Also, they seem to [...]

Friends, Wine, Food, and Games

I’m very excited to be able to announce that Lucca Comics and Games — the foremost Italian games and fantasy imagery show, bigger than Gen Con — and Janus Design — translators and publishers of the Italian editions of Fiasco, Don’t Rest Your Head, Polaris, and many others — have invited me to their big [...]

Game Design Studio: Crit #3

Hey, folks, because there are a couple of people clamoring for help, I’m opening up the doors to the Game Design Studio abruptly this time. You’ll have a little extra time to get your stuff together, but do it so you can come over and participate. I’m adding an experiment this time: if you just [...]

Choose Your Adventure! [Oo! Let's Make a Game!]

51:04 long & 49 MB big
In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction) discuss major changes to the game, spend a lot of time with feedback, and discuss how Jewish someone has to be in England.
We took some during-the-show notes. If you have [...]

Oo! Let’s Make a Game! Episode 9: Secret Powerz!

57:39 long & 52.8 MB big
In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction) discuss the abilities of the hunter-fog-cloud thing, talk a bit more about the tech web, then get into brainstorming some of the possible powers that the different characters in the [...]