Observations of the Fox

There are always ideas going through my mind where I combine the concepts that have been produced by other people, into something new, or maybe just a new interpretation of something that that I think wasn't necessarily executed as well as it could have been. I guess that's just the curse of being a game designer. I'm currently working on the equipment book for The Law, but another nagging side project has begged to be written during the course of NaGaDeMon. I don't know if I've mentioned this side project before, but it's something that has been tinkered with for a few months now... it's working title is simply The Fen. The basic premise of The Fen is bayou rentpunk. A bunch of people struggling to survive, with little opportunitu to get ahead in the world, are simply trying to survive as they struggle from meal to meal, facing all sorts of environmental threats and hazards that constantly threaten to take them down. This isn't a game about her...

A few more pictures for the Familiar game. I'm trying to get a feel for it in my head as I finalise certain bits and pieces. This is not a clean, neat and tidy world, not a place where tragically-hip beautiful people pose for the camera, staring off into a vague middle distance with contempt. It's a world where things happen, where people do things, where familiars linger on the edge, prompting the movements of the world, for good or for ill.  It's a world where the stasis of the overwhelming has settled, hardened, and finally started to crack. It's a place where the rebellious spirit is sick of being oppressed and finally has the friends and the tools at their disposal to make a difference. But this is not a game about those rebellious spirits, it's a game about the enigmatic beings who grant them the power over reality, and the dangers these enigmatic beings face as hybrid entities caught between a dying world of dreams and nightmare, and a static wor...

I think these have an appropriately "urban fantasy meets rentpunk" vibe to them. A few more images like this. then I'll mix things up by having a number of illustrations in a different style. The next few images to round out this series will be focusing on characters of different ethnicities.

I had been thinking about this game from the perspective of street mages, maybe it might be better to play with the concept of familiars to street mages. The reason I've considered this is because I'm not really interested in developing a complex magic system for the game, except as a storytelling effect. Instead I'm thinking that there will be magi who act as conduits reaching from the human side to the mystic energies of the beyond...and there will be familiars who act as conduits from the beyond, reaching toward the mortal realm. Familiars form bonds to magi, each strengthening the link of the other in a symbiotic feedback loop. This helps explain why the characters don't have money, just a limited number of tools and edges. Familiars don't need to improve with experience, but they may gain stronger influence over the world as they establish stronger relationships with the magi, the eternal constants, and other elements of the setting. I'm not sure if t...

I had this idea once. The campaign exists in the form of 12 newsheets, or maybe punk-style 'zines. One for each month of the year. It doesn't matter which month you start with, there are news articles, hot bands to look out for, underground happenings, street commentary, and insight into the world. You start with one month, and certain events will be echoed in the next month's 'zine. A single story thread might spread along two, three, four issues. The characters will encounter things that are at their climax, other things that a developing beyond their control, and other situations that are just starting to unfold. Each 'zine would have dozens of such stories, where one event might lead to two or three potential offerings in the next issue, and two of three seemingly unrelated stories might reveal different perspectives or opening into a single large event in the next issue. It doesn't matter where you start in the cycle of 12 issues. But you go throug...

I've been trying to expand the Rentpunk game in the last post, maybe doubling the word count to 400 words. Trying to make it more coherent and add in a few new ideas, possibly turn this into the game that links in with the landscape images I've been drawing over the last few weeks. Whether this means the game becomes about rentpunk street mages, drawing power from other realities as defined by those lands, or maybe it becomes a game where they go voyaging in those lands as spirit quests to fulfill their obligations to patrons in the mortal realm who are unable to transcend the boundaries of our space and time. Once again, I find myself with fragments of ideas, but nothing altogether coherent. Maybe I need to sleep on it.

A new 200 word RPG for urban fantasy magi on the down low. Minimalist Urban Rentpunk Character Sheet Allocate dice to Attributes – d6, d8, d10, d12 Attributes – Combat, Influence, Knowledge, Magic An item A food 2 edges 3 people who owe you favours 2x Goal Sheet What do you want? [] (edge/equipment gained) What’s stopping you? [][][] (accumulate 3 successes/marks before attempt to claim it) If complete, write new goal. Day divided into 4 sections – Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night Everyone gets a single action scene during each section. Choose person to describe scene, then choose who describes scene’s challenge. Difficulty for scene challenge based on number of scenes character has been awake. First = d4, Second = d6, Third = d8, Fourth = d10, Fifth+ = d12 Failure: Your die < difficulty die Partial Success: Your die > difficulty die (risk favour/equipment [lost/damaged unless 4+ on d6], or use edge to succeed) Full success – Your d...

Preliminary background images Morning Afternoon Evening Night I've got a basic background framework program set up for this game. If anyone's interested in giving the framework a test run, I'll compile it and post a link. I does need a lot more work, and generally works as a basic "homeless simulation" survival game (I can survive over a month on it during my test runs), but it still needs a lot more work before it becomes a game with a good story.

If I'm going to program this as a visual novel, that requires a bit of groundwork. I need to know how the structure of the narrative will play out, I need to know whee thingss will happen, who could be met, what could be found along the way, and the kinds of events that will shape the lives of our protagonist(s). The more preparation at the beginning, the more logical the structure of the world. This all links back to the worldbuilding series I did last year.  From the single page of work here, I've got 17 locations identified for events to occur in. I need a bunch of NPCs to interact with (possibly divided into factions), and each with their agendas in the world (that may or may not interact with the stories being told).  But for now I'm trying to think of how the story starts...the dominant idea in my head is... A few years ago, a drug took hold on the streets, in the boardrooms, at all levels of society. It was highly addictive, highly hallucinogeni...

The series follows the adventures of the titular hero in the real world and in an alternate reality, referred to as the Outback. In the real world the Maxx is a vagrant, a "homeless man living in a box", while in the Outback he is the powerful protector of the Jungle Queen. The Jungle Queen exists in the real world as Julie Winters, a freelance  social worker  who often bails the Maxx out of jail. While the Maxx is aware of the Outback, Julie is not, though it is integral to both of their stories.    - Wikipedia Now imagine this as a game where the apocalypse is just around the corner. Is the "Outback" a flash forward to the apocalypse? Is it a spiritual world about to collide with our own and cause the apocalypse? When a character emerges from the "Outback", are they returning to our world, are they returning to the another realm? Can they really be sure of anything? If we assume that characters are viewing the "Outback" simply as some kin...

Thinking about storytelling from a GCR perspective has really made me think about different ways that storytelling and games can be united. This whole 'Rentpunk' thing has brought my attention to tw really interesting tools... Ren'Py and Twine Both of these are interactive storytelling engines, which seem to produce the kind of computer game stories that I associate with the term "Japanese cRPG". These are little tales that often revolve around relationships (boy chases girl, girl chases boy, boy chases boy, girl chases girl), and that might be because they are often developed by people with a fanatical devotion for anime. These two programs basically write "Choose-You-Own-Adventure" stories, and it would take a lot of work (or a good team) to get something that looks professional out of them. Their end product seems to be very linear, some might call it "narrative illusionism" because it looks like the player is making choices, but t...

Wow. I've been aware of the 'Rentpunk' thing over the past week or so, but haven't really looked at it carefully until today. Have a look here if you aren't aware of it. It's one of those concepts that I've seen in many games I've been a part of, but nothing particularly formal as a genre. It's the way we always played Shadowrun back in the day, sleazy overnight hotels, or sleeping in the back of the car when times were tough...trying to stay honourable, when the dishonourable thing might earn enough money for a good meal or repairs to equipment...not cashing in too many favours now, because you never know what might lie just around the corner. 25 years later, it's not Shadowrun...we just call it life. I've been in this place, I'm not quite there now thanks to a halfway decent social security network in Australia, and as a university student (and carer for a chronically unwell wife), living in a house rented from a friend, I'm a...