Category Archives: game design

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!

Kodrek, A Game of the Kotaht Archipelago

During last night’s game of Human Contact, there was a scene in a rough ‘n’ tumble bar where there was a gambling game going on between a couple of background characters in the Kotaht Archipelago. There was some hustling going on, so we wound up describing the game a little bit. Vincent wanted there to [...]

Science Fiction Language

Over at io9, there’s an article about languages in science fiction, using as an example how much ours has changed since Shakespeare’s time. It’s neat, and timely, as I’m working on the language section of Shock:Human Contact next. If I do another Preview Edition, it’ll be about language and war.
I’m also drawing on The Language [...]

Academy Law

There are several parts of Academy law that will be broadly applicable to the interstellar expeditions that will be the core of play in Human Contact. I’m interested to see how these are interpreted (and ignored) in the course of play — after all, it’ll be years, or maybe decades (or maybe never!) before contact [...]

Episode 11: THE END OF THE WORLD!

40:30 long & 37.1 MB big
In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction) end it all. Just in time for your Dreamation 2010 drive/flight!
- You can’t cut a piece off something living unless it wants you to, like one of those happy cow-like [...]

Human Contact

Human Contact is a version of the Shock: system, focused for a far-future, spacefaring setting. Its science is as hard as I can make it while still having fairy dust things like “interstellar travel” work, while at its core, the setting is about culture clash and the moral challenges of being an explorer and being [...]

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 [...]

[Oo! Let's Make a Game!] Episode 8: Building People!

54:46 long & 50.2 MB big
In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction) finish developing the character-based situation for the game they’re designing — before your very ears! — then move on to discussing some ways that characters can be pushed to change [...]

Oo! Let’s Make a Game! Episode 7: Life During Wartime

58:34 long & 56.2 MB big
In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction) try out a new way of designing and recording. The show will be going biweekly and Joshua & Rob are going to start doing some design before recording, then discuss [...]