Skip to main content

The Birch Crown

Ahahahaha.  My last post was more than eleven months ago.  In that post, I made fun of the gap betwixt posts.  Some things never change.
Cowl & Mask has reached a point that I'm happy with but somewhat confounded by.  I think it's different and innovative (I shall shy away from the grailterm "original") but I haven't had much success in convincing people that it's actually fun, and I'm not sure where (if anywhere) to go with it next.  In the meantime, I've kept up a moleskine notebook of almost exclusively game design ideas, and I've chipped away at various projects.
The one I'm feeling best about at the moment, however, is The Birch Crown.  I was playing Cards Against Humanity last year (after a Stanley Cup playoffs game, I believe - and I think the Lightning won that one) for the first time in a long while, and one guy was just running away with the game, and I got to thinking about how to use the core A2A/CAH mechanic for a game.  Add in a dash of inspiration from Tides of Time (a new favourite) and Chronicle (an absolute classic), and I had a tableau-builder with suited powers.  Theme and suit construction drew from The Draugr (supremely excited that it'll be BGG's next microgame) and the Decktet (such a rich toy).
So yeah... a complicated little family history there.  But I think it's at least interesting, and while I have a creeping suspicion that it might be too mathy of a point salad, and prone to AP as a result, I think if I pare away more and more of the conditional/situational cards and promote ease of play, I could have a half-way decent little Gamer's Party Game here.
At the very least, I've printed it, cut it, gotten it to the table, and revised it once already.  I've made my own iconography, I think the first pass at the rules is decent, and at least one person likes it.  It should hopefully be low-art enough that if I can get a bit better graphic design in there, this could be a game I could produce on DTC.
We'll see!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Campaigning

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday, let's see if I get something written before sleep overtakes me. I'm still on that Channelers kick, but today I want to talk about a possible campaign path: The Magpie Offensive.  I see this as a military campaign where the PCs are conscripted, volunteers, or mercenaries for an army that is marching to quell Spirit threats and unite the region under a protectorate. There should be free RP sections as interludes between missions, and missions should be chosen by the party.  The army ensures loyalty with intangible rewards as well as artifact items. NOTE: This whole thing is being designed with the Rascal article on militarization in ttrpgs in mind. What is the thrust of the campaign? It's fundamentally one of conquest.  How do I encourage characters to question their presence and their complicity? How much interpersonal violence is an acceptable price to pay for environmental justice? How can party composition affect all this from jump? H...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: The Secret Calendar

Welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! Have I done any this year? Looks like no! On pace to be a pretty low-posting year I guess. Today I actually have a full-fledged one pager TTRPG to share.  I was listening to a Ludology with Camilla Zamboni as the guest and was inspired by her collection Roll for Learning.  The Secret Calendar came to me pretty much fully formed as I walked and listened to the episode, though I do want to acquire RfL to get layout inspo. Anyhow, the first draft can be found HERE .  I think this could be a fun activity for students (was also thinking of Wolfenoot) and maybe I’ll publish it or submit it at some point. Okay I’m out of practice so that's it buh bye!
Post a Comment
Read more