Hi everyone! It's been a little while since my last post. In this case I can only blame my priorities for that, putting university study over blogging, how could I? But, not to fret, I have still be working on my games in that time and I do have some new game ideas to post about over the coming months. What I'd like to do now, though, is to share with you my experience with Playup Perth!
Into the Pie! is a four to six player card drafting game about making pies! What more do you need?
Oops! I suppose I should have done this at the beginning, but actually, I think it's better that I do it now. So, who am I, what got me into tabletop gaming and why am I writing this blog?
"In a story game, a player’s ability to affect what happens in the game is not dependent on their character’s fictional ability to do those things." - Ben Robbins Story games are a form of roleplaying game where the narrative takes greater importance than the mechanics of the gameplay, whether those mechanics govern physical (combat) or social interactions between players. The end state for a story game, unlike more traditional roleplaying games is having experienced an engaging story, not having "won", however that may occur. I find this kind of experience extremely interesting when considering the possibilities for its use, particularly in the leadership training space.
Being quite a visual person, the question that popped into my head was: what shape do stories take and how can I take that storyscape, which exists within the realm of language, and see it grow in front of me? A real-time tile matching game, where you try to make different types of steel according to market demand!
This the second of my Mars rover interview inspired games. It's all about flicking little asteroids around a table, hitting other asteroids and scoring points by completing objectives, while trying to stop your friends from doing the same!
Earlier today I was listening to a fascinating interview on ABC radio with Jim Bell, an astronomer and planetary scientist, who was the lead scientist for the colour cameras on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. If you would like to listen to the interview, you can find a copy here. It got me thinking about two ideas for games. One based building and sending a rover to Mars and another based on the idea of planets "swapping" rocks between them. Since the first one is pretty intensive, I'll talk mostly on that one and save the other one for next time.
I watched the West Australian Symphony Orchestra perform Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last night and while watching the movie and enjoying the wonderful music I came up with some games inspired by what I saw in the film. They all revolve around the theme of light vs. dark.
A great way to start up a new game is to think about the physical objects you could use in a game. If you haven't already been able to tell, I really like dice. All kinds of dice, honestly, but absolutely d6s (six-sided dice) more than the others. Why? It's a cube, with six possible outcomes. Cubes are easy to stack and they don't take a long time from rolling to outcome. But how else can you play with a die?
A chess variant where units level up when they defeat an enemy and respawn when they die? When does the game end? When you kill three kings and force the final king to surrender of course!
This is a game design under progress. It is currently at a very early, conceptual stage, where I have just begun to piece together mechanics to create the game. As the game progresses, I plant to write additional posts. |
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