Velocimancer Games

Hello hello.  We’re back this week with another TTRPG Tuesday.  This week I figured I’d think out the Experience I want to create with my two WIPs - The Riders 18-card RPG, and the Company scenario The Envy of Ajax.  It’s going to be a bit freeformy - quelle surprise, eh? The Envy of Ajax: Someone who likes The Company and has played it before sees that there’s a short standalone scenario, and picks it up.  The simplicity of the pamphlet gels with the accessibility of the zine, and adds to the small but eye-catching pile. The person wants to get some friends into the Company - perhaps friends with similar taste in films, but not especially versed in RPGs.  The first zine allows them to build everyone full characters, but for first timers with just one evening at their disposal, the Eurydice Incident seems to be too much of a commitment.  Instead of trying to pick one of the scenarios from the second zine, the GM decides that the pamphlet will be loose enoug...

Welcome back to another TTRPG Tuesday! Although I’m still chugging along in MtG and therefore have all sorts of Out of Mana-ish neurons firing, I’m in an RPG state of mind in terms of what I want to noodle out, so that’s what we’re doing.  Still disorganized though, so have some more stream of consciousness bullets: For The Envy of Ajax, my analysis of the pamphlet situation yields these data points: 3 columns each for the GM and the Players, and the columns can each fit: 1 dense table 2 manageable tables 3 small tables 5 paragraphs totaling >1000 characters. Mixing and matching those fundamentals will get me where I need to go, and maybe I start with layout to determine my actual design constraints, particularly since I tend to go raw unbroken up text before sorting, which might hurt me in this case. I’ve never played a DM/GM-less RPG myself.  I’ve read some, sure, but to be honest that constraint is the most challenging part of the Button Shy challenge.  For that rea...

I was planning on completing my daily mission in MTG Arena, and finishing up the blog post I’d started, and maybe getting some playwriting done, but instead I did other very fun and very productive things last night and I have absolutely no regrets.  So since I missed my chance to do TTRPG Tuesday on schedule, we’re going to do a “Whatever I Want Wednesday” - and what I want is to do my TTRPG Tuesday post a day late.  That’s called a compromise! Enjoy. Ok, I’m “participating” in a study right now, so I’ve got some time to kick out some more thoughts for this week’s - TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve been thinking non-stop about The Envy of Ajax, and I downloaded What A Terrible Night so that I could get an idea of the amount of information in a pamphlet RPG, and how that information is presented.  I can visualize the trifold pamphlet stood up, like a DM screen, with Setup and Player information on the outside, perhaps map/environment, and enemies, story beats, items and their conseque...

Here we are, face to face with, I believe, another Tuesday.  I kind of want to keep it short so that I can go for a run, but also have a lot of thoughts buzzing about my brain.  Let’s just barf out some freeform thoughts for this May the Fourth TTRPG Tuesday! Recently talked over the possibility of writing more scenarios for The Company.  While I’m going to write whatever my grotesque heart and sad little brain want to write, what was mentioned as an actually usable contribution is a pamphlet sized (<1k word count) scenario.  The draft of the DOLLIE Extraction that I handed in was ~1600 words, so that’s still a fairly large amount to work with.  I mean, cutting out the Shepherdesses or otherwise reducing the enemy list, building in less plot or backstory - the same concept could easily (ok, perhaps not EASILY) have come in under 1k.  What might make a good candidate for a shorter thing? Well, it should definitely be one Act.  I’m torn as to whether ...

Good late evening loyal listeners.  It’s another surprise late night installment of Out of Mana.  Happy Mechanic Monday! I actually bought myself a few booster packs of the latest set for my birthday yesterday.  However many years clean and I just grab the first needle I see, amazing.  But the theme of the set (Hogwarts but no money to TERFs) was on my radar months ago, and I always knew that if I was gonna come back, it would be for this.  And I really like the set! Witherbloom/Silverauill, obvs.  I should’ve gone for one of the blue schools, as blue fuckery offers the most control and therefore (in my limited, annoyed experience) the most (and most unfun) wins. Speaking of Strixhaven and its new mechanics, why don’t we get down to it? Reserve Powers In GREEM, players purchase buy and sell goods, as well as special player powers that let them define and accelerate their strategy.  Prior to the start of the game, players assemble a six-power reserve....

Just did a post yesterday, so let’s cut the chatter and get back on schedule with a Mechanic Monday. Whole Combinations of Pieces as Win Condition In GREEM, the board begins with a (randomized?) setup of neutral pieces, each of which can move along one axis - North-South, East-West, NE-SW, or NW-SE.  On their turn, a player can move either a piece or a stack.  In the first instance, the player can claim a neutral piece and move it in the direction that the piece allows.  If the piece lands on a neutral or friendly piece, stack the pieces - the new stack can move along any axis that any of its composite pieces could move along.  A player may also use their turn to move a stack, but may not move it onto or past an opposing piece or Stack, and may not move it onto a piece (or a stack containing a piece) that it already contains.  Once a player creates a stack with all four types of piece, the stack is removed from the board and added to the player’s scoring area....

Well, I ended up taking last week off for a move, and now it’s almost the end of the week after that, so let’s try and get something in shall we? I’ve been playing a fair bit of MtG:Arena, so I wanted to jot down some of what I’ve learned as a player, and make some associated notes for how those lessons can be applied to broader game design Let’s start broad - I’ve always said that MtG is essentially a game design sandbox.  A couple of specific goals, but myriad tools that can be used together in endless combinations to expand those goals and to create different types of engines for achieving them.  And I’ve come to realize that deckbuilding closely mirrors which rules go into a design.  As a youth, I had a very limited cardpool, and had seen very few games in play, so I knew very little about momentum, control, or engine building.  The deck du jour at the time was the premade Sliver deck and it showed off all that Magic and its colour pie were capable of - but all *...