Observations of the Fox

I've started drawing the pictures of people who've kindly offered their pictures as post apocalyptic survivors for Walkabout. There are more on their way.

I like the idea of markings on the track to reflect interactions between the skater and the ground. I could have taken the Formula D route (which seems to be the way Impact City Roller Derby is heading), but this makes the turn sequence effect a bit messy. Still, the inside of the track needs to be faster, yet it needs to have more centipetal force pushing the skaters toward the outside of the track. Holding the centre needs a combination of speed and strategy. But if you can hold it, it should provide a great advantage. I described a method of applying values to rack segments in the descriptions for part ten of this development journal...but I'm not sure if I'm happy with it. There are numbers to compare to cards, different coloured numbers that do different things, and generally a few rules that make the game harder for new players to understand (especially those who might not be familiar with the concepts of wargaming). In the spirit of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple...

Using the rules established so far, covering movement and basic blocking, it’s time to have a look at the way game play would work. This should give us some clues about where the gameplay might fall apart. We’ll go through these examples with two teams: the East Side Eagles and the West Side Warriors. To make things easy, the East Side Eagles have names from the first five letters of the alphabet: Annie Phylactic (A), Belle E. Dancer (B), Candy Caine (C), Dina Might (D), and Ebola Effie (E). The West Side Warriors have names from the last five letters of the alphabet: Veronica Venus (V), White Russian (W), Xena Phobe (X), Yvonne Bett (Y), and Zsa Zsa the Gore (Z). Annie Phylactic [Soul: 10, Speed: 9, Strategy: 10, Strength: 5] Belle E. Dancer [Soul: 8, Speed: 6, Strategy: 7, Strength: 7] Candy Caine [Soul: 6, Speed: 8, Strategy: 6, Strength: 8] Dina Might [Soul: 6, Speed: 7, Strategy: 6, Strength: 9] Ebola Effie [Soul: 7, Speed: 10, Strategy: 8, Strength: 7] Veron...

I was pointed to this by a facebook post and found it interesting enough that I had to share it. While it mostly references board games, a lot of the points could easily be applied to RPGs. A list of some of the best advice for anyone creating a game in any form. This was originally written by your friends over at Board Game Designers Forum ( http://www.bgdf.com , all original credit will go to them) and we think people would do very well to follow these few "Best Practice" rules closely. Please add any additions to the thread about your  own personal experiences and best practice principles  so that we can build an industry wide important resource together for both budding and professional Game Designers. Game Design Principles Do not add a rule to take care of an unusual situation.  In almost every case, the game can be subtly changed to prevent the situation from occurring. Each added rule, no matter how uncommonly it's required, adds complexity that makes your gam...

Apparently, The Game Crafter is running a contest where entrants need to develop a roleplaying game that will be made available through their site. One of the rules states that the game need different players to control a single character each...so even tough I'm planning to have characterisation aspects in "Hell on Eight wheels", each player controls a team. So that rules out entering this game for the contest. Even thought I'd love the extra exposure it might provide. Walkabout might be a decent fit. But I don't want to compromise some of the ideas I've got happening. It might be time to resurrect an old game project. Guerrilla Television might be due for a comeback, especially since it hasn't been formally published yet.

There are a few thing I haven't revealed about the major changes I'll be making to the new version of Walkabout. For those who've been following the progress on the revised Walkabout, I recommend you having a look at the old version of the game (which can be found at  http://www.vulpinoid.com/walkabout.html  or at  http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=85404 ). The game as written basically a post-apocalyptic take on my FUBAR rules set, with a few tweaks and twists. But I've since had some ideas to tie the feeling of game play into the scavenger paradigm of the setting. This means I'm getting rid of dice, and incorporating a "counter drawing" mechanism. It's not much of a shift from the statistical distributions of die rolling (at first), but the feel of the game takes on more of a ritual storytelling vibe rather than an interactive game vibe. That's what I'm hoping anyway. In the dice version of the game, you roll a minimu...

In the past, I provided some ideas for a world where the geomagnetic poles shifted of their axis, causing a huge electromagnetic pulse like the spinning of a huge magnet, generating massive electrical energy that simply obliterates the electronics of the world. The aftermath of this catastrophe was a world where the orbit destabilised and the planet now spun on a new axis, with a new randomised polar point. To illustrate this, I generated a map with a north pole in Madagascar. This is a project that has sat orphaned for a while, but I've decided in recent months that it would make a good fit with the Walkabout setting. I'm now going though the various types of catastrophes that might befall different parts of the world when the global tilt-shift occurs...including seismic events, pandemics, nuclear fallout and anything else that might cause  panic on a global level. I'm also researching as much as I can about the continent of Antarctica beneath the ice cap. Th...

One of the supplement sets I'm working on for FUBAR is called "Dead and FUBAR'd". It's a game where the characters have been killed with unfinished business...they have to tr to resolve that business before their limbs rot to the point of uselessness and their bestial urges take control once and for all. I'm running it at the Sydcon RPG convention, later this year. The catch is that one of the days at Sydcon has been designated a "Kid Friendly" day. You need to run something suitable for kids to play. How do you do this with flesh eating zombies hell-bent on revenge and accomplishing the deeds that will allow them to rest in peace? Simple. You make it a game about stuffed toys. Zombie teddy-bears who seek to beat the stuffing out of their enemies. So they can eat the stuffing and refill their own torn bodies with it. Revenant piecemeal action figures who reattach the limbs of their opponents when they have taken too much damage...and each...

It's been a fortnight since I've posted anything about Hell On 8 Wheels. If you've been following this project, don't worry; I'm still working on this. I'm just trying to work out the best ways to describe some "actual play" examples for the rules. I've also fallen behind on my intended schedule to get a FUBAR supplement out every month this year. It's February and I've got two supplements in the works, neither of which is ready for purchase. My time has also been sapped away by my redevelopment on the Walkabout game. The other problem has come in the form of re-enrolment at college. I'll be studying fine arts this year. It looks like another year where I've over committed.

For those who are interested in the world of Aussie RPG design, there is a Facebook group dedicated to designers down under. Australian Game Designers (Facebook) For those who din't have Facebook accounts, I've set up a companion group on Google Plus. Australian Game Designer (Google+) If you're not an Aussie, feel free to join anyway. Maybe we can show you some interesting techniques that have been developing down here over the past few decades.