There was a conversation going around the independent game developers' community a couple of months back concerning the reasons for game publication. The idea was that, with the accessibility of desktop publishing opensource programs and the ease in which one could post these creations online for free, then there was a dwindling need to actually publish and charge people money for said games.

I mulled it over for a long while. Was there a reason to create my game and publish it within the tried and true standard model in which people needed to pay me money to read my book? I came up with some answers as to why I wanted to publish but none of them seemed to hit it on the nose.

Finally, I discovered two. One was the proceeds-forwarding aspect of the book's sales to the Star C. Foster Writer's Prize. That one, well... that's pretty obvious.

Then there's the other, and that's the creation and propagation of a community. There exists right now a community of independent creators that develop their own games, publish them, and then use those publications to further redefine, re-examine, and grow the gaming community as a whole. Publication is another avenue of availability. In the current model on which the internet works, finding e-publications that are outside of specific search parameters is nearly impossible at best. Having an existing hard copy that can be stumbled over, found as part of a collective publishing model, or passed around from member to member of a community is another avenue in which the information can be examined and imparted.

Simply, I believe that I have something important that can be added to the discussion and, through that, the community. I think that I'm doing something. That's the second reason I want to publish.

This message has been inspired by this little video right here of a man named Clay Shirky being impossibly intelligent. View and enjoy.





(thanks to Mr. Warren Ellis for the edification)

Alright, I've been trying to write some text for this that sounds hard-boiled and cool, but I can't because I'm just really excited. 

Rob Bohl, or the indie_insurgent , is the host of the role-playing game design podcast the Independent Insurgency.  I was luck enough to sit down with him and talk about my upcoming game Criminal Element.  Criminal Element is a heist movie role-playing game where players take on the roles of the members of a crew, working a job of their own design while trying to fight their inner demons.  We talked about the game, the process of design, the Star C. Foster Writer's Prize, and how much I have a man-crush on Judd Karlman. 

If you want to hear me talk about my game, or just see how loud my laughter actually is, you can go right here to download it and check it out. 

A great big thank you to Rob for taking the time to sit down with me and talk about the game, as well as all of the time that he spent editing the recording.  And a gigantic thank you for all of you people that listen to the podcast!

God, where have I been?

It's been near on a month since my last post (speaking of, thanks for all of the encouragement on the dating front, guys!  More on that in a minute.) and I feel remiss for this.  There's been a bunch of stuff going on, so I think I'll handle all of it in lovely, lovely bullet-points!

• I'm still dating the woman.  Her name is Kristi.  Things are going fairly well there, taking into consideration the sort of baggage I tend to travel with.  I'm getting better at not freaking out completely and pulling away and screaming when someone tries to get emotionally close to me.  That's mostly because she's a great girl and I'd like to not do such things to her.  So there's that. 
  
• Oh, man, Criminal Element.  I got in some really fucking good writing over the past day or two.  Edited some sections, rewrote a section.  Now I just have two chapters that I need to expand from notes into actual, "i'm a real writer" text and the Shotgun Bible should be ready to go. 
  
• Speaking of Criminal Element, I had the great honor of doing a podcast interview about my game on Rob Bohl's Independent Insurgency.  The podcast isn't up yet, but should be soonish, so I'll post a link as soon as it does.  You can check out previous podcasts over here.  It was the first time I'd ever been interviewed about the game and, if I'm going to be honest with myself, I'm not sure if I did my best work on "selling the game", but it was a great conversation that Rob and I had, and I think it might be an interesting thing for the people out there that are interested in any kind of game and design, or who just want to see what the hell I've been working on for the past five (!) years.  A huge thank you to Rob for having me over his place and giving me a chance to talk about my game.  (Sorry I couldn't meet up with you at PoliCon man.  You're still doing DexCon, right?)
• I should mention that I was sorry to miss PoliCon to Don as well.  eruditus , sorry man.  Work's been a bear, but that should be clearing up sharpish.  Still up for some DexCon, yeah?
  
• I'm being transfered from my current location at the Major Video Game Retailer I work for to one that is further from home, in a mall, and is open considerably later than my current store.  I'm not terribly happy about this...
• ...though I might have another job prospect lined up that will amend that situation quite nicely.  I'm not wanting to say too much, in fear of jinxing it, but hopefully I'll be able to be more lose with the tongue in the next couple of weeks. 
  
• Thanks to the kindly intervention of feanor1138  and feanorsgrrl , I was able to see the current "it" noir movie at the Philadelphia Film Festival.  "Blast of Silence" was a fantastic, bizarre, lurid crime novel committed to film, with a slick, seedy monologue laying over top of the whole thing that sounded like "Donald Westlake's Choose Your Own Hitman Adventure".  I found it completely different from what I expected and absolutely enjoyable.  Criterion Collection has secured my twenty-odd dollars for their upcoming release. 
  
• A lovely flub committed by my bank has left me with a negative balance in my checking account, when I should have something that is very much in the positive.  I've been afflicted by this for near on a week now.  I'm not happy, to say the least.  I should have enough gas in my car to at least travel to and from work tomorrow, so at least I have that on my side. 
  
• I bought Rock Band for my 360.  My band is called "Parker Black and the Magnificent Bastards".  This automatically makes my fake band more Rock n' Roll than Fall Out Boy.  I've also four-starred Run to the Hills on Vocals at Medium.  This makes my fake band more Rock n' Roll than Daughtry.  Info on a Rock Band based party action soonishesque. 

That should take things up to the present, so let's have enough of this "Previously on... Mike's So-called Life."  What have all of you magnificent bastards been up to?

I've been working on the latest draft of Criminal Element, the inevitable beta playtest document thingie, which I'm calling the "Shotgun Bible".  I'm calling it the Shotgun Bible because a) I want to have a name for the beta that isn't "beta playtest" and b) it's a cool fucking name. 

Anyway, I've got a particular way of writing, especially when it comes to CE.  I try and get the feel of the game down in the writing.  I would like people to read it and just feel that "heist movie" vibe.  In this hope, I've written the following two lines when describing a part of the game mechanics:

"A heist is like geometry; it’s full of angles.  And all crooks have an understanding of the mathematics of crime."

I've got the feeling that that line is just a little too cute to wind up in the final draft.  Way too cute.  But damn if that little bit there doesn't make me smile. 

After running my game, Criminal Element, at Dreamation, and having the chance to talk with some fellow creators, I came away with the need to do a rewrite.  I understood CE more than I ever had until that point.  I knew what game lay at the center of that big hunk of marble I'd had sent down to my studio.  Now was the time to carve away all the excess material that I'd bloated the game with, to discard what weighed down what I envisioned my game being, what I had inadvertently padded my game with because I had lost my way. 

I came home and started writing.  And what I wrote first was a simple thing, the game's thesis statement. 

I wrote down exactly what I wanted my game to be, what I wanted it to do.  I boiled it down and purified it and write a paragraph that says "This is what my game is all about".  I wrote a header that said "Design Goal" and then wrote down exactly what my goals were. 

( And this, my friends, is Criminal Element. )

Dreamation kicked my ass in the best possible way imaginable.  I got to see some old friends, meet some amazing people, playtest my game, run a session of Dirty Secrets that didn't go as well as I would have hoped sadly, and play in a bunch of great playtests. 

Here I'm going to write about the games that I played in.  I'll also write about the convention as a whole and the Indie Designers' Roundtable, but they'll be in separate posts.  Each of these subjects deserves some face time of their own. 

The first thing I did, after getting lost on the way to the convention that is, was play a session of Jeff's Kingdom of Nothing.  Great ideas, cool presentation.  The adventure we were presented with didn't really highlight the best parts of the game, but I definitely got the sense of 'coolness' i was hoping for.  During the group character creation I wound up pushing things a little too far for one of the characters' secret pasts and made that character a little bit broken.  Totally my fault.  The dice mechanic wasn't really working, but I understand that Jeff is working on a new mechanic that sounds much more in line with what he is trying to do.  All in all a satisfying session of gameplay with the tangible promise of being a a really fantastic game.  

The next day brought with it a session of Omega Point, the cyberpunk story telling game.  We wound up making a group of cybernetic rock and pop stars all vying for fame and power.  The story was great fun, set during a battle of the bands that our characters were all participating at in some way.  The rock star moments kept coming in faster and stronger (and stranger), and I had a blast playing.  Excellent job, guys.  

After that saw me playing Misspent Youth.  God damn did this game soar.  I was one of those guys yelling at Rob during the Indie Roundtable, telling him that his mechanics worked fine.  The dystopian future we created was one in which a religiously-guided political power fights back the forces of progress, reverting technology and science back to a 1950s-era understanding and disseminating fear through the media.  Our youthful offenders were rogue EMTs (!) trying to save lives using banned medical text books and home-made penecilin.  The job we went on was to try and get our hands on a bunch of old medical textbooks and get the information inside them out to The People.  Along the way my street medic and a rogue faith healer worked together to save some lives, our tech-head buddy stole a car while it was still being driven, our priestley friend lost his faith, and the gonzo journalist in our squad became even more disillusioned.  I should also point out that the part of character creation where you get to ask one of the other group members a deep, probing, personal question was great and really helped set up the group dynamic.  (Rob, I'm not sure if you've thought of this yet, but if we get to ask further questions of the characters, we don't ask those new questions of the same people we've already asked, right?)

Then there was the playtest of my game, Criminal Element.  I'll say up front that it was hit and miss.  Once the game got moving, it really fucking moved.  PCs were breaking into government facilities, killing guards, breaking down security locks, all that stuff.  That was a blast.  Getting there took FOREVER, though.  More on that in another post, but I just wanted to thank everyone for coming out to play my game sight unseen.  

After that brought a session of Don't Rest Your Head run by Ryan Macklin.  Excellent game, incredibly well-presented by the man himself.  I played a meth-addicted doctor trying to get close to people while the fear of their impending death still haunts her.  The other PCs were great, too, including a mathematician that can "see" math in the world around him, and a shut-in who is constantly accosted by the haunting face of jay Leno.  We fought monsters, i found my little sister before she was eaten at a restaurant, and my good friend Dan's character became the Boogie Man.  My only concern with that game is a personal one.  I felt like, at the end of the session, I was being a bit forceful with my character's story and not sharing the stage with the other players. 

The next day was nice and light.  I got to sleep in, relax, eat a little something, then play Joshua Newman's Shock:.  Kick.  Ass.  The game was hacked on the fly to support FIFTEEN FUCKING PLAYERS, but it worked and made for a really compelling game.  Our Shock:, or science-fictional story element was "On the eve of the Clone Rebellion".  Juicy, right?  The issue I wound up intersecting that Shock: with was "Memory", and I made a doctor who was a clone of a nat-born doctor that had died.  Of course, the nat-born doctor's memories started to haunt me, including the memory of his/my wife and their/our children.  The clone rebellion existed for me in two ways, both professionally as people harmed by the rebellion were under my care, and personally as my character's girlfriend was a member of it.  Sadly, I had to run out at the end to set up for a session of Dirty Secrets.  If anyone reading this was also in that game, please give me the highlight reel of the ending. 

Then came Dirty Secrets.  Sadly, the game wound up being a noble failure.  I had set it at midnight on Saturday, a poor move on my part.  People were exhausted by that point and I had two of my five players cancel.  The remaining three included a player who had played the game before and was totally invested and two players who had no experience with story-gaming.  The mystery was really interesting (a prostitute and sometime patron of a federal agent has three kilos of heroin stolen from her that she was holding for her pimp) but things fell apart after about an hour of gameplay.  The two players that hadn't story-gamed before were confused and a bit overwhelmed by the amount of storytelling power they had.  It was still a cool session because it gave me the opportunity to show these guys some new tricks.  I consider it a 'win'. 

Things wrapped up on Sunday with the Indie Developers' Roundtable, organized by Fred Hicks and Luke Crane.  It was incredible.  A real peer event, where everyone was welcome to throw their ideas out and really get a discussion going.  More on that later. 

All together, a great four days of gaming and fun.  As I drove away from the convention I found myself thinking "What am I going to play next?"

In about an hour I leave for New Jersey, harrytheheir riding shotgun.  We head out east for one thing: the job.  We've been planning it for weeks; working out schedules, laying out the routes there and away, putting together the gear.  When we get there we meet up with our two partners in crime, Hirschney and Peccable, and we settle down to business. 

It's a long haul.  Four days of work and it seems like there's too much to do to cram into ninety six small hours.  But that's what we've got to do.  'Cause we're gamers, and we're coming to Dreamation to game. 

I'll be doing the world premier of Criminal Element there, running the first ever convention sessions of the game.  I'm also running a session of the freakishly good Dirty Secrets.  I'm meeting up with some other great gamers, like judd_sonofbert, eruditus, and his lovely lady friend spring_violet, and I'm crashing with Joshua A.C. Newman, Rob Bohl, and Julia Ellingboe. 

All stops will be pulled out.  There is no turning back. 

Game on. 

Updates on LJ as time permits. 

So, Judd of the Ennie-award nominated Sons of Kryos, in his infinite coolness, once again dropped the name of Criminal Element, and yours truly, in a podcast. 

Why this is cool... The game isn't done yet, though it's pretty damned close now.  I'm hoping to open it up to open beta playtesting in a couple of weeks.  CE has been a labour of love for the past four years now, and I can't tell you how amazing it is to hear people talk about my game.  It's even better when they say really nice things. 

For those who knows what getting on SoK means... isn't that fucking cool?!

For those that don't... SoK is like your favourite NPR radio show, but concerning role-playing games.  Three guys sit around and talk about their gaming lives and discuss all kinds of topics, all in an attempt to help people have more fun at their gaming tables.  The show is entertaining and insightful and an absolute must-listen for me and lots of other gamers every other week when it goes live. 

For those who are Judd... I owe you beers, man. 

Alright, I need a little help, and by me asking you guys this question I also realize that I'm going to sound completely inept and dumb. 

I've got a website up for the RPG I've been writing, Criminal Element.  (By the way, you should play it.  It's totally cool.)  I've had it going for a little while now and I've been getting a bunch of hits on it.  I get the occasional email to the website concerning the game, but it's kind of a pain in the ass to have to use thunderbird or whatever to pull the emails down.  So, my question is this: is there a way that I can forward email going to my website over to my GMail account?  And, if so, will I be able to email out of that same account and have the return address still be the email address from my website?

After your done snickering, could you please help me out?

After a bit of a nap I decided that just posting about my CE shenanigans on LJ wasn't really going to help things.  Now you can read a better relaying of events and talk about some stuff over on the Forge, my old stomping grounds for indie game creation.  Hopefully I'll get a good discussion out of the post.