Velocimancer Games

Heyyyy it’s TTRPG Tuesday.  I should focus on knocking this out before I head out for a long weekend vacation, instead of the Twitter troll raising my blood pressure.  I wanted to do a short post today about the DOLLIE Extraction, as I got together a first draft of the scenario last week and got it submitted for review.  It had been kind of sitting on my To-Do list, and I wasn’t sure when I was going to get around to it.  That’s been the case with so much of my writing/game-making lately: A big slice of executive dysfunction, a paralysis wherein even broken-up tasks feel impossible, insurmountable.  Granted, I’ve felt like this at several points throughout my life, and I’ve developed various mechanisms at different times in order to adapt to and overcome that feeling.  Which is why this week, not only did I get the scenario draft together, I also got a full Fantasy GM Squared build onto Tabletop Simulator.  How’d I manage that? My productivity last wee...

Man, what to write this week? I missed Craft Wednesday, and TTRPG Tuesday, and Mechanic Monday.  Maybe I should just do a little checkin though, and plan for the rest of the month.  Sure! Let’s do that. “The rest of the month” is pretty much non-existent tbh.  Tomorrow is my five(!)-year(!) wedding(!) anniversary(?!), and this weekend doesn’t have a lot of room for design, considering our sexy sexy plans of [grocery shopping, getting COVID tests, and flu shots] and next week we’re driving out to a little airbnb to celebrate, and as a much needed break from work.  So it’s a good thing that I got the first draft of my scenario for The Company RPG in to Logan (forthcoming TTRPG Tuesday post on what got that tied together for a v1.0), but as for my other goal, an Alpha of Fantasy GM Squared, I got screenshots from my collaborators of the prototype components that I’d improvised on the spot, and I’ll need to block out a couple of hours to set those in digital stone (using...

It’s late on a Sunday and I’ve gotten nothing together but it’s important to me that I still get something out.  It’s been a packed time, but that’s not much of an excuse.  So, here’s just some random fucken game design thoughts.  Board appetit. HADES as cardboard: So I’ve been playing the sexy gay Greek Myth game, and it’s a joy.  It also has some very tabltetop-y elements.  I love the multiple overlapping currencies, and the Boon system is a fantastic multi-use card opportunity, with cardback by Deity.  The next-room selection situation feels like cards as well, and the roguelike enemy generation.  What the game gives you, really, could be expressed almost entirely via tabletop, with legacy elements for the big picture.  The question is, how to tackle the action-rpg gameplay: what is the player input? My impulse is not to go the Gloomhaven route, but rather to abstract it into something more Pixel Tactics, or even more abstract: something like w...

Well well, a new week.  How original.  I had an idea for a possible Mechanic Monday but it turned out to just be Stratego.  C’est la vie! (Although maybe it could still work if the forces weren’t all set in stone, and player’s had a limited number of reserve forces that they could secretly commit prior to each combat, and also instead of larger forces wiping out smaller ones, they would deal the difference in force sizes as damage) (Also note to self: Each player starts with a different hidden amount of VP/Currency that they have to pay (plus interest) at game’s end, as a way to truly hide who’s in the lead.) Anyway it’s Wednesday, so there’s no time for any of THAT stuff.  Today, I’m going to kvetch informatively about Tabletop Simulator. So, TTS is, near as I can tell, an incredibly powerful and useful tool.  It’s also absolute ass to parse, as someone coming to it cold.  The official guides are largely unhelpful for the designers whose experience is limi...