When we put forth the effort to write a game, it’s usually because we’re in love with the concept and want to see someone do something about it.  The problem with writing games is that it’s hard to get a chance to play the game you wrote.  Either you’re too busy running the game for other people, or people get nervous if you sit in when someone else is running a game you wrote.

Here is a list of games I need someone else to write, so that I can play them.  I want to play these games.  If I have to write them, I’ll never get a chance to.

Futurama The RPG – I’d play the holy hell out of this game.  I threw together a sample setting for a game system my good friend Will is working on, but I’d still like to see an official release.  Dibs on Zoidberg!

The Harlem Globetrotters Fight Crime – I think it’d have to be another RPG but let’s be honest, this would be awesome as a first person shooter.  Think of the team play!

Barbarians Of Cataan – Building cities and trading is for chumps.  When to de get to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamenting of their women?  Start with a fully populated island, then rape, pillage and burn it to the ground.

Buckaroo Banzai The RPG – It’s a crime that we’ve gone so long without an officially endorsed Buckaroo Banzai RPG.  Everyone would play this game.  Everyone.  Absolutely everyone.

Reverse Clue – All you have to do get yourself and the right weapon into the right room with Mr. Boddy, whereupon you knock him off and win the game.  No one will suspect a thing.

Actually, I might have to add that last one to the Secret Project List.

Damn.

(Update: It’s been pointed out that Reverse Clue is Kill Doctor Lucky.  Never played it, I’ll have to now).

I promised I would do this, even if it hurt.  This one hurts a little.

1. Shambles – Art continues to trickle in.  Should be more this week.
2. Obnoxious Howler Monkey – I came really close to working on this a couple times this week.
3. Simulated Jocular Anaconda – Unchanged.
   
4. Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda – Still in playtesting.  Did a little bit of work on it.
   
5. Shambles Source Material – Created a google doc to hold this.  Currently consists of the titles for the 6 sections.
6. Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – Unchanged.
7. Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – Unchanged.
8. Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – Unchanged.
   
9. Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – Unchanged.
10. Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – The only problem with using code names is when you forget what they stand for.  OH YEAH.  Unchanged.

Excuse Of The Week: I had to do a lot of work on the site.

I’ve set up a redirect so that links to the old site should now all be magically redirected to this site.  If you are having trouble accessing a resource on the old site, please comment or email me and I’ll get you sorted out.

The only gaming group I’m really in right now meets once a month to play Battlestations.  It’s a ship-to-ship combat game with RPG elements that I think is quite excellent.  There’s a lot of hand-waving in the rules when it comes to things like 3d space and blast radius and other bits, but the handwaving just works.  It’s balanced, plays well, and more importantly, keeps the astrophysics out of the way so you can play.

There are several different species in Battlestations, ranging from balls of hair to tentacles to giant bugs to piles of rocks.  There’s even humans.  In the current game, I’m playing a Canosian Scientist.  He’s a big ball of hair that can move really fast.  I originally made him to be the medic, but he’s become something of an all around science guy.  He carries a Nerve Disruptor, which causes the target to drop everything they are carrying.  For Canosian and Tentacs, who can carry an infinite number of things (ball of hair, ball of tentacles respectively) the visual effect can be comic.  He’s also addicted to the drug that makes you good at Science.

This was my first time playing a longer Battlestations campaign, and I can’t speak highly enough of the game (I should write a review).  But as tends to happen, I’m finding myself looking toward the next character and realizing I’d have made different initial choices if I’d understood the system a little better.  I’ve got several characters on deck:

A Tentac Chirpa named Tanzig.  He follows other people around carrying all the gear.  And I do mean ALL the gear.

A Canosian Marine named Porthos.  He’s a nimble little Florentine Fighter.

A Xeloxian Rigger.  He mates on the ground.  Long story.

A Silicoid Pilot named Heap.  Pilots don’t tend to move around much anyway.

A Zoallan Ship Combat Specialist.  There’s a lot of room for getting good with laser cannons and missiles.

A Human Bot Specialist.  He never had many friends.  So he made some.  He gets pretty irate when they get blown up.

A Canosian Grenadier.  All he needs to do is chuck grenades and run.

A Xeloxian Energy Swordsman.  Because how beautiful is  the image of a 6-armed alien rolling down the hallway of a ship with an energy sword in each hand.

It just goes on and on.

More Shambles Sample Art!  This one isn’t finished yet.

The artist IMd me last night and asked what the policy was on nudity in Shambles.  Specifically, Zombie Bum.  I said I’d have to see it.

See below:

I think it’s gonna be awesome.  If you have a dissenting opinion, please leave a comment.

In other news, this will be the last post linked to @AlphaComplex as future posts will be linked to @ATerribleIdea (Don’t Worry, @AlphaComplex will still be posting, automated and otherwise).

So I had said yesterday that there were impending changes coming to the site, within the next week.  And that there would be a new domain, and probably a new theme.

I don’t mess around.

Well, you’re looking at the new domain.  As for the new theme?  Bollocks to that.  Just getting this site to look halfway like the old one reminded me why I never, ever want to make a new theme again.  Don’t get me wrong, I am sure I will eventually.  But for now, you’re getting more or less what you had before, but with a brand new name.

Yeah, that name.  Let’s talk about that.

Me, I love it.  You may be scratching your head.  It’s a bit of an in-joke.  I have no idea how it got started.  I blame Will.  “That’s A Terrible Idea” is sort of a passphrase among my closest friends, that is exactly the same thing as saying “You Know You Have To Do It Now.”

Also, now I can print on the back cover of my games, right at the bottom:

“This Game Is A Terrible Idea.”

Feedback appreciated, post in the comments below.  I’ve set discussion to not require registration for now, but as soon as the spambots return I’ll have to require registration again.  Please click around the site and let me know if anything looks broken, or if you get kicked off to chaoticneutral.net

I really didn’t want to do this. But I’m forced to agree that it’s a Good Idea.

I was positively gleeful when I got this domain.  I knew as soon as I started really writing games that I wanted to use this domain as my ‘Gaming Face’ as it were.  I was always a little bothered that I only had the .net domain, as two other people had the .org and the .com domains, and having just the .net domain is a little like winning Most Mobile Patient In The Leg Burn Ward.

But, domains are what you make of them, and in the end most people are just following links anyway.  So I was determined to make a run of it.  When I saw the .org domain was expiring, I contacted the previous owner and they said they were done with it and were happy to transfer it to someone who would put the domain to use.

When I looked at doing the same thing for the .com domain, I asked a friend if he thought it was worth pursuing, and he raised a very valid point: That while the alignments (including Chaotic Neutral) had been released under the OGL, and while WotC probably couldn’t legally keep me from using the term as the name for a business, and while they probably would not actually win a court battle, what they COULD do is make me prove it.  And that would easily cost me more money than I would ever hope to make from a game.  WotC would probably not care at all if it was just some website where I talked about games. When I start selling games as “Chaotic Neutral” they may decide they care.

Let’s be honest for a minute – I should be so lucky as to be even recognized by WotC as anything at all.  If I were ever to sell enough games as to even be a tiny blip on their enormous radar, I would be successful beyond imagination.  And the odds of this, if I am realistic, are somewhere between Seeing A Human Spontaneously Combust and Waking Up Covered In GOOOOOOOOOOOOLD.

But.

At this stage, when I haven’t really released much other than a demo, and when I’m ramping up to build and write and do all sorts of things, does it makes sense to just change the course now, before I lay all the track, and avoid a situation where even if I managed to win, I would lose?

Yes.  Unquestionably, it makes sense.

So, I got a new set of domains.  I’ll be hanging on to this domain (for one thing, I need it to redirect to the new site for a while). But new domains means new setup, means I need to change at least the logo, and if I’m changing the logo then I may as well just change the whole dang theme.  Which is a shame, because I bloody loved this one.

Maybe I’ll keep it mostly the same, but that just feels cheap to me.  So I’ll probably be making a more drastic change, within the next week or so.  Once it’s done, we’ll have a party.

In addition to the project I laid out yesterday, I have decided to add some things to the list.  These are gaming projects that are in various states of completion or initiation. My goal in listing them here is that I will provide a weekly update for all projects in the list, and that I will be motivated by seeing the projects with the word “Unchanged” after their status.

You should understand, I have a “Crazy Schemes” list in my docs, that is a spreadsheet of things I want to work on.  As I write this there are 56 items on this list.  The list is incomplete.  So, what appears below is the list of things I want to work on next, after I complete work on Shambles, Obnoxious Howler Monkey, Simulated Jocular Anaconda, Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda

Shambles Source Material – This is a set of source materials that can be purchased to use in Shambles.  I have several ideas for what will go into this, but vowed I would not work on it until the main Shambles book was done.

Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – This is a the Paranoia scenario I wrote about earlier. This scenario is about 20% complete.

Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – This is a complete new game using the same dice system as Shambles.  I have a very clear picture of how this game works mechanically, and have the atmosphere worked out, but the setting is proving to be a challenge.  That may not make any sense on the surface.  I’d say this game is about 25% written.

Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – This is a complete new game that also uses the same dice system as Shambles.  I have a nearly-complete first draft of this game, and it’s fully formed in my head.  I need to write more setting and color text before I can call for art and have a functional first draft.  This game is 65% complete, most of what remains is Art.

Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – This is a miniatures combat game of the non-painted, non-collectable variety.  There are some loose rules defined, but the problms I face here are more mechanical in nature.  This game is probably 10% done.

Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – This is a sort of board game I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head for a few months.  This game is maybe 5% done.

That’s not all the projects I have in mind, but these are the next 10 I plan to work on.  Starting next week, there will be status updates on each one.  Until I give up in despari or start getting things done.

Do you remember back in September when I said I had been approached to put together an electronic, gaming related prop?  And remember back in October when I said there was a new project that was similar, and that there was another new project that was similar but not quite the same, and there was a fourth project that I also couldn’t talk about, but it wasn’t new and a couple people knew about it?  Remember all that?

I want to update you about those projects.  But it’s a little hard to do it so ambigiously. So I’m going to give them code names.

The first project I mentioned, the one from September, is an electronic, gaming related prop.  It has been designated Obnoxious Howler Monkey.

The second project I mentioned, the electronic gaming prop that was somewhat similar, that project was in fact the Arduino-Based Laser Tag Game that was designed to be used as a prop in a Paranoia game. This project needs no further codename.

The third project I mentioned, which was not a prop but was useful and game related, was in fact the 3d10 Game Scripts You Can Write In PHP series that I wrote.  This project also needs no further codename.

The fourth project I mentioned was not a new project, and had come up a few months earlier (in point of fact, almost a year ago).  This project is ongoing, is game related, and a couple of you know about it but cannot talk about it.  This project is codenamed Simulated Jocular Anaconda.

Since that post, there arose a fifth project, not previously mentioned, that intersects Simulated Jocular Anaconda. This project is also game related, and is codenamed Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda.

These codenames will help to avoid future confusion.  Trust me.

Now, STATUS UPDATE:

Obnoxious Howler Monkey – This project has not yet left the cocktail-napkin stage. Parts have been acquired, and the theory explored, but no prototyping, assembly or proof-of-concept work has been undertaken.

Simulated Jocular Anaconda -Initial work that was done for this project was promising, but has had to be scrapped.  The project proceeds forward, but was placed on the back-burner for some time to allow work for other project.  Namely:

Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda -This project is currently under test, and is 90% functionally complete.  I genuinely hope to provide earth-shattering news for this project by the end of the summer.

I have a large number of other projects in various stages, but I will leave them off for now.  Soon I hope to create a master list of project codenames, which I can update as projects get touched.

I woke up this morning to learn that during the night, AlphaComplex had posted this on Twitter:

#iranelection has been redacted and is now considered Unhistory.

The odds are about 1:000 for that specific posting coming up, assuming #iranelection is always a Trending Topic and that the script will post anything at all.

I’m growing increasingly nervous that Paranoia will become a game we look back on and remember when it was satire.