Blog like a Pirate

Yarrr...it be the 19th o' Septemb-arrr, so it be time to be talkin' like a Pirate. The buxom swashbuckler who be spendin' the last 13 years as me helmsman made a wise decision to get married on the 20th o' Septemb-arr, else that weddin' might a been quite a confusin' day indeed.


T' be honest, today snuck up on me like a monkey with a musket.


-0-

Enough pirate talk, it's taking too long to work out what I want to say in scurvy slang. 

Even though I didn't realise it was coming up, I've been working on a project that's related to my first published game..."The Eighth Sea". That game was based on a earlier unfinished work named "Tales", which designed to be a generic system but was probably more of a convoluted mess. "The Eighth Sea" had elements of the original game stripped out, and a few other elements added in. It probably had a lot of loose unconnected bits, because at that stage I hadn't read much about ensuring game mechanisms support the narrative, I don't even think the "clouds and boxes" post by Vincent Baker had even been made yet... I had a few tools in the game that created funky effects, and a few ways to direct players in certain ways. More narrative than many of the mainstream games of the era, but certainly not complete or polished.

Recently I've decided to get back to basics with a game concept. So I went back to "The Eighth Sea" and "Tales", stripped it down to the core resolution mechanism and applied some of the better fitting game design theory to the mechanism...to see what fit. 

The aim was to produce a pocketmod set of core rules...with a possible pocketmod scenario booklet, or setting booklet, and a pocketmod character sheet/passport. Nothing more. The whole thing runs on a deck of cards, so the game could be packaged in an Altoids tin, or some other small tin.

The first scenario and setting booklets will probably be based on The Eighth Sea to cromprise the rewrite of the game which has been 8 years in the making...

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