Velocimancer Games

I am tired and I start rehearsals tomorrow and haven’t started memorizing in earnest yet because I finally booted up Stardew Valley on Switch and I’ve got a new save file that’s starting its first summer off right and I don’t know if I’m going to marry any of the townsfolk or just take care of all the elderly characters, get the singles to fall in love with me and then move in with Krobus.  Anyway here’s MechaMon. Today’s mechanic has been kicking around for a bit, and has mostly been passed over for a post because it’s kind of inherently goofy.  I was buzzedly rambling to some folks this past weekend about how “games writing” is the hot new scramble for would-be playwrights in the same way that voiceover is going to magically make every improviser I know super-rich, but that games writing is more interesting to look at for its emergent narrative potential than as screenwriting 2.0.  For playwrights in particular - come on! You come from a writing tradition that is forev...

It’s Monday! Time for a Mechanic.  Something something theatre, my childhood blah blah, yadda the joy of teaching yadda, anyway.  You get the gist. We were all there, we were all moved. On to the mechanic! Relative Movement Rules In GREEM, two players begin with an equal number of pawns, all isolated an equidistance from one another.  A pawn may move a number of spaces equal to the number of its allies within three spaces. A pawn must always move within a row or column that contains another allied pawn.  A pawn may capture another pawn if it is the only pawn that could do so. The game ends when all of one player’s pawns are eliminated, or if the advantage between remaining pawns meets or exceeds five. This is one of my most placeholder-filled sample rules, and it’s because it should be quite a simple game, so the unknowns loom disproportionately large.  But you can go a couple of directions with this: it can be a square grid, a hex grid, a ring grid...

Another Monday, another post! I’m going to keep this brief again, since I need to work on a grant application for my theatre company.  That’s a much more urgent demand, but I think knocking out a bit of hybrid technical/creative writing real quick will help me get my brain in the right gear *neck tie zipping sound*.  I start rehearsals for a play (my first acting gig in a while) at the end of the month, and it feels like my plate’s just very full right now.  Lo que sea! Onward. Today’s mechanic has been on my possibility list for a while.  It sat there because I could visualize it and how it would play out fairly easily, but it doesn’t completely inflame my imagination with potential, you know? But one thing I’ve learned about writing is that it’s worthwhile to write even when you’re not saturated with inspiration, to play the long odd that you’ll hit gold, and to de-couple your writing time from struck-by-creative-lightning time.  With that in mind, here’s t...

New year, still here.  In spite of all my rage, I am still alive.  And back at it with another Mechanic Monday! Not a lot of preamble for you today since I already got some writing out of my system with a little bit of DnD character doodling - I have Session Zero of my first campaign in yeeeeeaaaaars tomorrow - and I need to get home to my beloved pooch so I’ll skip the recipe blog bit and get straight to the mechanic.  This one popped into my head after rapid-fire consuming Dan Thurot’s Best Week (an annual run-down of top games in custom categories pulled from his year’s worth of reviews) and BGG Design Diaries for Oath by Cole Wehrle. Cooperative Resolution to Conflicting Player Asymmetry In GREEM, the players represent state actors who wish to broker a peace, but who are empowered by policies from governments that are fundamentally at odds with one another.  Each player’s pool of possible actions is tied to a rule that must always be observed - and while the a...

Did I mention that I've started in a new department at my day job? It's true! It's a writing-centric job, which I balked from for a long time, but a tiny amount of time in, it hasn't soured me on writing yet.  If anything, my time on this Earth has led me to think that perhaps a balance can be struck, between being ground beneath the heel of capitalism (in this one, particular instance) and bEiNg FuLfIlLeD, I can hone my writing skills without burning out.  Famous last words! But anyhow, that's one reason that I've been able to catch back up on my podcasts, stay atop my theatre's agenda, and write these very articles, which no one reads.  I don't actually mind that no one reads them by the way.  No, honest! People see my plays and talk to me about them and it makes me want to die, whether they're being positive or negative, so frfr it's nice to just have a quiet little corner of Al Gore's Internet where I get my reps in working both sides of...

Let’s change gears a bit this Mechanic Monday, shall we? I’ve just realized that the format of this site has calcified over time into a particularly sleep-deprived recipe blog, but for unused game designs.  Truly, my fingers are clamped firmly on the pulse of these manic times.  I hope all of you are enjoying these enthusiastic mental rambles, in such a modern format. I just taught a playwriting class yesterday.  I’ve already completed the regular 7-week session, but as it’s a class on playwriting, they are expected to write a play, and yesterday was our midway-point checkin out of the two-to-three months they have post-class to get out a draft.  I’ll meet up with this group one last time in January to read from their completed drafts and to do a little post-morteming of how the process went for them.  Some of them already have drafts completed, some of them may not have one done by the final deadline.  Talking with a few of the students after the session...

Ho man, I get to do so little game design these days.  The busy summer, my theatre, auditioning, hockey, weddings, homeowner diy stuff (yes yes some real champagne problems in there) it has been a taxing… uh… indeterminate length of time.  I’ve been tired for as long as I can remember.  I never did get anything together for that September design challenge, though I did plenty of useful scribbling, and it did scratch the itch a little.  I just haven’t been able to keep up a weekly post for this blog like I’d prefer, or fill notebooks with idea atop idea.  The world has such big problems, and this is such a small thing, but I still feel that tiny absence.  You know? I find myself thinking mostly of my likeliest designs.  Amberlodge always calls out to me, like a comfortable, thinky world, just a dream away.  Runtime Error & Frameshift Mutation could truly be the kind of game I most like to play (which is, of course, very different from good o...