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. )

The first person I talked to once I got to the convention was Rob Bohl, creator of the game Misspent Youth.  He was running a game at the moment, but I needed to see him because we were sharing a room and he had my key.  I felt bad, calling him up in the middle of his session, tracking him down and interrupting, but he was generous and kind, pshawing me as I apologized.  That set the stage for what would be a great convention experience. 

Dreamation is a great, rare experience in the gaming community in that it is a gaming convention that is chiefly concerned with gaming.  There's a real, palpable excitement from everyone you meet because they, like you, are all there for one thing: the games.  Sure, there's networking and game sales and such, but the dealers' room is small and the networking happens only when you're sitting at a game table, playing with some people that you're networking into becoming your friends. 

I got to see some old friends there that I haven't seen in quite a long time.  They had heard about the convention through my roommate Camden and just decided to come up and surprise me, while at the same time getting some good gaming in.  I also got to see Judd again, who I hadn't seen in at least a year.  We were both so busy with the gaming life that we didn't get to sit down and just talk like I'd hoped, but we did get to blather about comics for a couple of minutes so at least something was accomplished.  The two Dans were along for the ride as well, getting in some great gaming and having plenty of fun stories to tell when we sat down for brunch every day. 

I also met a ton of people for the first time, and I got to game with them.  Ryan Macklin ran an incredible game of Don't Rest Your Head, as well as kept me up until six in the morning with his ability to have a brilliant conversation with me.  I split my room with Julia Ellingboe, Rob Bohl, and Tobais (damn it, I'm forgetting his last name right now), who were all gracious, kind, intelligent people that I wish I'd had more time to hang out with.  I sat in on a session of Kingdom of Nothing run by its creator, Jeff Himmelmen, a great guy, energetic and thoughtful.  It was also wonderful to meet Joshua Newman, a firecracker of a man who was excited and smiling every time I ran into him.  I had Matthew, Nicholas and Minetta in a game of Criminal Element that I ran, and all three were a blast to have at the table, as well as talk to away from it.  Kat Turner was a recurring figure in my gaming that weekend, playing alongside me in both Misspent Youth and Shock: and she was an incredible presence, a person that got genuinely excited when other people brought up ideas at the table and fostered them into something awesome. 

As a lurker and occasional poster on forums like Story-Games and the Forge, it was really cool to finally meet some of the people I interact with in those venues.  What was even cooler was getting the chance to meet people, game with them, and hopefully create some new friendships. 

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. 

Congratulations to Judd / judd_sonofberton his 3 Ennie award nominations.  Judd was nominated for Best Podcast, along with Jeff and Storn, for the Sons of Kryos podcast.  He also got nominations for Best Writing and Best Product of the Year for his truly amazing Dictionary of Mu. 

There's other great books and gaming materials that were also nominated, but none of those are written by someone that I actually kind of know.  On top of that, SoK is aconsistently entertaining and thought provoking gaming podcast and the Dictionary of Mu is one of the most beautifully-written and well-presented game books I've seen in ages. 

Kick ass, Judd.  Kick ass.

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. 

A couple of weeks ago I ran some sessions of Criminal Element.  A good time was had by the players but, more importantly it was a solid three sessions of playtest.  After each session I grilled the play group on a myriad of elements of the game and the way it played.  What I discovered through this batch of playtesting was pretty interesting. 

As you most likely know, my internet service was down for a week.  That meant that I had to email using a friend's Sidekick phone when possible, no comic book or gaming websites, no livejournal.  It also meant that I couldn't do any support of the new website, which being just two weeks old I really wish I could have done. 

Being without the internet did have its boons.  It gave me an excuse to catch up on some reading, watch the last season of Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, and generally just be kind of lazy.  It also lead to me not having easy access to some good friends for a little while, which wasn't so hot. 

There were some nice surprises when I got back to the internet, though.  Some fun emails concerning a new thing we're trying for Tuesday Night gaming inspired by Ron Edwards' Sex and Sorcery and Judd Karlman's Dictionary of Mu, though funneled through Shadow of Yesterday. 

Indie gaming is how we roll, by the way. 

There was the last episode of this season's Shield, which was phenomenally good (looking at you, vis_major!).  There were some episodes of the Wire and Avatar: the Last Airbender that came through from Netflix.  There were new podcasts from iFanboy and Have Games, Will Travel. 

And then there was the shout-out that I got on the Sons of Kryos. 

For those not in the know, the Sons of Kryos is a gaming podcast made by the afore-mentioned Judd (aka:</b> judd_sonofbert)along with Jeff Lower (aka: thelostgm) and the recently-added Storn A. Cook.  They discuss gaming from the perspective of grunts in the field, as players and GMs talking about what their playing.  The best thing about the podcast is the positivity of it.  They obviously love gaming of all kinds and talk about the things that they do at the table that makes their gaming work well, what can sometimes sink a game, what have you. 

I can't say that I've met the other two but Judd himself has been a cool guy, a real booster for the game since I met him at last year's Dexcon.  He recently got a chance to run his own session of the game that I've been working on for a couple of years now, Criminal Element.  He sent me an email telling me that he had a good time running the game and described things a little bit for me.

It's such an incredible thing to hear that other people got to play the game that I've been working on and to know that they had a good time.  I mean, that's the chief purpose of playing a game, to have a good time.  So I'm just excited to hear that this guy that I think is a cool cat, and that I respect as a game designer, played the game and had fun. 

But, when I got to work this morning and threw on the SoK podcast I had a cool little surprise.  Judd talked about the game for a minute.  Nothing too in depth.  The DJs (is that right?  maybe podcasters) talked about the mini-con that Jeff had organized up in Ithica and Judd mentioned the game of Criminal Element that he had ran and that it was a blast. 

Honestly, how cool is that?

Fullmotor Productions is back up and running, and that means a new website as well.  The website is where you'll be able to find stuff on Criminal Element, the heist and caper movie RPG that I've been writing.  In the game players create a crew of thieves and crooks and try and take down the score of a lifetime.  Part Heat, part Reservoir Dogs, part Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  And if that isn't cool enough for you, the game uses the card game Blackjack to resolve everything.  You can even bet your experience points, here called Drama Points, on your actions.  If you win the hand, you get a fat return of more Drama Points. 

If you're interested in gaming, or just want something to read through on your lunch break, take a couple of minutes and stop on by.  Everything there is in downloadable PDF format and all designed by yours truly.  The game is still in playtest, meaning that what you read here isn't the final text of the game.  All of the rules that you'll need to play are all there, though, as well as character sheets and such.  All you'll need to supply are a couple of decks of cards, some poker chips, and a crew of players that are up to no good. 

Tonight was the first session of Criminal Element for the Tuesday night gaming group.  CE is a heist and caper movie RPG that I've been developing for the past four years.  It's been a slow burn as I've worked through various bits with the system, making sure everything works how I want it to and all of that. 

I was nervous about running the game.  The last time I ran it was back in December, and the thing is very personal to me.  I guess it might be strange for some people to think that an RPG is personal and important to someone, but CE is exactly that for me.  It's got a lot of my blood and sweat in it.  The game also reminds me of Star.  It's something that she and I talked about a lot.  She was excited by the game and really supported my work on it.  Hell, her christmas present for me was a deck of playing cards and a card case just for CE. 

But I'm not writing to dwell.  I'm writing this to say how much this game kicked ass. 

In discussions with a couple of my players I realized that not a lot of people know the differences between a heist and caper movie, the genre tropes, all of that stuff.  I wanted to be sure that my players understood the genre before we got started so the tuesday night group took one session off last week to watch Heat.  Not only is that movie a completely kick-ass experience, it really hits all of the classic heist movie tropes perfectly.  After that movie as a primer and a bit of a discussion afterwards on the genre and the game Criminal Element, I felt confident that we were ready to play.  The players and I immediately started talking about the kinds of characters they wanted to play and the sorts of heists they wanted to try and pull off. 

When we sat down earlier tonight to go through the actual first session of the game everyone's heads were already buzzing.  There were character concepts, setpiece ideas, settings, just buzzing around and waiting for their moment.  We talked for a couple of minutes more about the game and then got right down in to it. 

CE has a strange approach to the pre-game stuff that most RPGS have, like character creation and all of that.  A good section of the pre-game is devoted to the players designing the heist themselves, from what they're stealing to the kind of problems that they'll face.  This part of the pre-game is called the Setup.  I had decided to establish a couple of very broad concepts about what the players were going to be stealing ahead of time.  The Score, as it's called in this game, was going to be something that a criminal organization had in their possession and the PCs were going to be trying to lift it from them.  I didn't bother to decide what it was that they had or anything like that, just that the Mob or whomever had it. 

With that in place we hit the ground running.  A quick discussion of style lead to the game being modern day, set in France, and the tone being somewhat serious.  I'm thinking the best corrallation is probably the short-lived tv series Smith or the movie Ronin.  Dark, edgy, slick, a little violent, but not a blood opera like Reservoir Dogs. 

Everyone had had a week to sit on the game and think things out and it really showed.  The next step was to talk about the kinds of characters that the players wanted to play, and everyone was fired up.  With a week to think about the kinds of characters you generally see in heist movies, the players had come up with some very loose archetypes they were interested in playing.  After a couple of minutes of talking we had the makings of a strong Crew.  Camden decided that he wanted to play a wheelman, one with a penchant for the dangerous.  Dan had Infernal Affairs on the brain and made a Face that was also an undercover cop that had been under for too long.  Kevin was in the mood to bruise his knuckles and came up with a former Russian soldier gone freemarket.  Finally, Zoe was thinking about Veronica Mars (and who can blame her) and decided to take a cue from Mac and play a too-smart-for-her-own-good tech head. 

With the basics of the characters fleshed out, we went in for the more probing bits and discussed the PCs desires, or their Motives and Vices as the game likes to call them.  Camden's driver was motivated by excitement and adrenaline, and along with that the most dangerous of women.  Dan's character had to weigh his own desire to repay a very personal debt with his own ideals.  Kevin's bruiser has a need to be the best but constantly gets tripped up by his own loyalty to others.  Tech-head Zoe is all about taking on the impossible challenges, even if that means making things more complicated and difficult for herself. 

We talked for a couple of minutes about what the Score actually was, but when Zoe said that it could be a list of informants that the Mob had gotten their hands on we didn't need to work any further.  On top of that everyone had been talking aobut setting the heist on a moving train and I wasn't going to argue with that bit of cool. 

Next we talked about the kinds of problems the PCs are going to come up against on the heist.  The game calls these problems the Heat, and boy did we get some hot ones.  As it goes, players have to come up with one instance of Heat for themselves, and then another for the player sitting to their left.  Camden started the ball rolling by saying that his character was going to need to outrace the train as part of the heist.  By the time we were done players had introduced bodyguards, EMP pulse safeguards, interpol agents, and other bits of trouble for themselves. 

After taking a couple of minutes to put some numbers on character sheets we were ready to go.  I started the session off in media res, as many heist flicks go.  A simple little scene in which someone with their head in a burlap sack had a gun put at their temple with a voice-over saying "It's almost inevitable.  This is how things always end."  Then I jumped back to the beginning and ran through the little-s setup.  Got the crew together, got them into a meeting with their broker, put the job in front of them.  We wrapped the session with the crew talking about the job and Camden, when confronted with the prospect of having to somehow get from his moving car onto a moving train, said "We're going to need a place to park my car."

I can't say how happy I am with the game right now.  Everyone had fun, the system went through a couple of draws and everyone seemed to catch on quick.  Nothing too deep happened in the system yet, but everyone picked up on the way the cards are dealt and played, and people even started betting on their actions right out of the gate.  We had to cut things a little short, so we didn't have the chance to do th customary post-game.  No deep discussion of system, no questioning the players, any of that stuff.  Hopefully I'll be able to get to that before we open next session. 

All in all though, things were wonderful.  Next session we go into the thick of things.  The crew plans the heist out and then we go right into it.  Followed by a session of everything that happens after the heist itself, which as any fan would know is the best part.