Category: making stuff

OLMAG Episode 6: How to Start a War!

Check out that kid's face.

(EDIT: I’ve changed the header image that was originally on this post because it was NSFW. For posterity, in case someone is curious, you can find the original image here. Edit: No, Rob. That wasn’t the real image. That was for a completely… different project.)

52:24 long & 50.3 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), we talk about a few possible initial scenarios, and decide which one we want to explore first. There’s some good progress here from the absolute slaughter and misery we inflicted on each other in the prior episode.

Joshua’s homework and Rob’s notes during the show

– Joshua tries to let Rob off the hook for being lazy
– Vincent Baker gave us extremely helpful feedback on the forum
– We get more status by talking about Vincent’s input than we do from discussing Paul Beakley’s
– Joshua talks about a whispered Story Games thread between he and Alexandre (board name Kobayashi), who was a soldier in the Yugoslav Wars
– Joshua’s scenario idea is the refugee one
– In LIFELESS, you play…. (around 10:30)
– Simon C’s feedback, which brings up discussion of Vincent’s fiction-first posts
– Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix and Crystal Express
– Requisite references to Dollhouse and Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels
– We settle on the refugee thing, as at least the first “module”
– A mention of (and spoiler for) the film Silent Running
– Emily Care Boss’s Sign in Stranger
– We want to have the game to come with the scenario all set to go, like John Harper’s Lady Blackbird
– Our homework: each of us writes: a setup for the war, 6 characters, a relationship map, and the initiating technology that made it terrible
– No listener homework
– Working title: “Lifeless”
– We mention the comic book/game store we were about to head to in Northampton, MA: Modern Myths

You can subscribe to the show by plugging the RSS feed URL into your preferred podcatcher. You can also use the one-click iTunes button thingie:

The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is from the same band and the same album. The song is called Sheena’s Got a Microwave Now, and I chose it because it’s the harrowing story of a love denied and interfered with by an insurmountable gap in technology.

Oo! Let’s Make a Game! Episode 5: Sticky Situations!

01:54:51 long & 110.3 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), discuss how to pre-bake-in a situation for the game they’re developing. Many hearts were broken, unforgivable things were said, will they still be friends at the end of this arduously long show? Listen in to find out.

Joshua’s homework (Rob didn’t do his).

– We start of being enthusiastic about Idiocracy
– Rob skipped homework, Joshua didn’t
– Discussing input from Vincent Baker, Simon C., and Doc Holaday
– Charles Stross’s Accelerando
– Futurama
– Transhumanauts!
– John Cassaday and Warren Ellis’s Planetary
– My friend Blake, who had an interesting idea for a game
– The movies Cube and Saw
– Montsegur 1244 and carry: a game about war
– Ganakagok
– 100 Bullets
– Exquisite corpse
– Wildly various spider genetalia
– Twenty Bucks
– Psi Run (or, at least, its forum)
– Dogs in the Vineyard
– Mouse Guard RPG
– Do not look Vincent Baker in the eye
– Our homework: Vomit forth creativity on this project
– Listener homework: Give us some scenarios

Rob’s during-the-show notes

You can subscribe to the show by plugging the RSS feed URL into your preferred podcatcher. You can also use the one-click iTunes button thingie:

The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is Overlap by Ani DiFranco from the album Out of Range

Oo! Let’s Make a Game! Episode 4: Social Networks!

01:06:30 long & 63.8 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), discuss possible structures for a session of play, talk about how to structure technological and interpersonal relationships, and talk a bit about how mechanics might work. Lots of meaty game design here.

Joshua‘s and Rob‘s homeworks

– Listener feedback: Paul Beakley, Nathan Wilson, Simon C, Doc Holaday
– The book Starfish by Peter Watts
– Discussion of how many players the game should service
– Initialization, a word to be used a lot in the game
– Drop initialization phase created NPC?
– Primetime Adventures
– Spotlight characters, scene order, and whether scenes are about players or characters
– Are there too many scenes? Can you run out of interesting stuff before you run out of time?
– The roles that PCs play in spotlight characters’ scenes when they’re not spotlight
– The Wire
– Introducing new NPCs and new tech, tying Currents to them
– Talking about the tech web
– Separate relationship maps on each character sheet to reflect different visions of relationships
– What am mechanics?
– Joshua = power, Rob = meaningfulness
– Joshua promises a diagram
– Mind control!
– Personality Anchors, and we argue over it
– Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels
– Rob keeps talking about “spotlight scene” when he means “spotlight episode”
– Anchors and immunity
– Vincent Baker’s thread where he’s asking for critique on Apocalypse World
– What to call the co-GMs?
– Homework: write up what a scene might feel like, which we’re probably going to do on the forum
– No listener homework

Rob’s during-the-show notes

You can subscribe to the show by plugging the RSS feed URL into your preferred podcatcher. You can also use the one-click iTunes button thingie:

The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is I Wish I Was a Boy by Angry Red Planet, provided by Podshow’s Podsafe Music Network.

The Game Design Studio Opens Its Garage Doors

bauhaus

Let’s try a little thing!

I just put up the game design studio here at xenoglyph. It’s a forum specifically for real, grown-up critique.

I will be applying the standards of studio group critique in order to support the creation of better games and better artifacts according to the publication objectives of their creators.

The forum will be heavily moderated. I want it to generate solid work, so any socialization that happens will be within the context of the stuff you’re actually creating. If you want to chew the fat, meet me at the bar at Story Games. If you want to actually work on your game, put on your apron and let’s work on your thing.

Read the rules. If you have something you feel could use work and you feel like the rules might help you, then we’d love to see your rules, your text, your page design, your cover. If you feel like you can help, please come help.

All That’s Missing Is The Sun To Bake It On My Back

Matzah

Matzah is only slightly more fun than dreidl. As a lot of folks know, I’ve been trying to invent a dreidl game that’s any good at all for several years now, to no avail. But I’m all up ons with the matzah thing.

Here’s what you do.

  • 2c flour
  • 1/2ts salt
  • 1/2c olive oil. Use something good. I like Star, but we just went through a bottle of extraordinary yumminess that I can’t remember the name of.
  • 1/3c water
  1. Preheat oven to 350°F
  2. Start your timer. This has to be in the oven in under 18 minutes or it’s no good for Pesach. 18 is the gemmatria for “Chai”, which means “life”, so it’s “alive” in 18 minutes, and that means it’s leavened.
  3. Don’t sweat the time. This takes like 5 minutes.
  4. Combine the flour and salt.
  5. Sprinkle in the oil while tumbling around the flour. See if you can get all the flour stuck into oily, crumbly chunks.
  6. Sprinkle in the water while turning over the flour/oil mixture as little as possible. Don’t knead it. That’s the key. Just get it mixed so everything’s damp with oil or water.
  7. Oil up some baking sheets.
  8. Roll it out just as flat as you can get it, ideally 2mm thick or so. I rolled it out on my baking sheets so I knew it would fit, but it was a little awkward because of our rolling pin’s shape.
  9. Bake for 25 minutes.
  10. While it’s baking, clean up the flour so you don’t have chametz floating around the kitchen. Also, it’s a mess.

The result is much like a pie crust. It’s awesome with meats and I want to try it as sort of an eggs-and-biscuits thing, too. When I did it, it was just as good the next day. There wasn’t any to test on day 3.

I checked with our favorite rabbi to ask about it’s KFPness, and he said he couldn’t think of any reason it wouldn’t be OK, though seder matzah has to be just flour and water. Since I was baking this so we could eat dinner (all the grocery stores being totally sold out of matzah), rather than as a ritual object, he figures it’s fine, since people fry matzah all the time.

Building An Electronic Drum Kit

I’ve been setting myself up with an electronic music studio in the basement built around some old gear. This project will include some found sound materials both from the freesound project and from me walking around with my iPod and a recorder dingus. I want to use not only ambient street sounds, but also percussive ones that might be good for drums, so I need some sort of drum controller. And here I am.

I’m using an Ensoniq SD-1 as a keyboard and Garage Band as a sequencer. I’m using PolyPhontics to assign notes to the pads, rather than fucking around with the 90s-vintage controls. I’m also not using any of the remarkably awful sounds these old synths come with.

Eventually, there will be music!

Eyes in the Night, Delivered To Your Doorstep

Beowulf. An epic game by Joshua A.C. Newman

Beowulf is off to press on the morrow! I’m doing a very limited run, Ashcan-style, so if you want to read the poem, consider the exegesis, play the game, and give me feedback, this is your chance!

I’m selling it for $14+$5 S&H, or just regular $14 at Gen Con. Since the run is limited, I’ll be selling the remainder at Gen Con that I haven’t sold via my own site, so if you want to make sure you have a copy, preorder and I’ll shoot it off to you as soon as they get to my doorstep. If you want to wait until Gen Con, you can, but I’ve had a few people interested in preorders already, so you take your chances with the Wyrd.

Even better than picking up a copy at the Playcollective or Ashcan Front booths, order one from me, play with your friends, play with me at Gen Con, and give me feedback that will both be fun to generate and help produce a great final book.

It’s 244 pages long, 5″ x 8″, and I’ve made uglier things in my life.

Order Beowulf (sold out. Please give feedback!)

Making It Be What You Want It To Be

My final college project was a Medieval-style mystical tome containing an allegory using modern artificial life and intelligence as its alchemical ingredients. I bound the book using traditional European bookbinding techniques.

You’ll notice, if you order one of my publications, they’re gp0002 or gp0005 or some such number. Homunculand was the first glyphpress publication in a print run of two, so it’s gp0001. It’s not for sale, but if you come over to my place, you can read it. I hope to someday rewrite it for broader publication. Maybe that edition will be gp00015 or something.

As ashcan season comes upon us, I’d just like to remind everyone that there are a lot of ways to make a book. Many of the indie games of years past have been bound at home, using a variety of loving techniques. Paul Czege’s Acts of Evil is hand-splatterpainted. I believe the first edition of Dust Devils was bound in Matt Snyder’s basement. Paul Tevis’ A Penny For My Thoughts is bound like a patient dossier. Books are not a magical thing that someone else makes. They don’t need to be a particular size or shape. What they need is to look and feel the way your game looks and feels so that it attracts and holds the people you want to attract and hold. Find your way to make that happen.