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2006-08-22
: Finding our games by Meguey
1001 Nights is for sale through my game company, Night Sky Games.
Breaking the Ice and Shooting the Moon are for sale through Emily's game company, Black and Green Games.
2006-02-05
: Initials and Handshake by Emily
Hi there,
Welcome to Fair Game! What's your name and what initials do you use for marginalia comments? Anything else you might like to share?
2006-05-13
: Movie list by Meguey
Here's where I want to jot down movies I want to see. Comments and *short* reviews, no spoliers please, are welcome. Feel free to reccomend movies, too, with your review.
2010-01-10
: On not writing
posted by Meguey
This feels like a very familiar place: I want to be writing a game, but I'm not, because my life has demands, and other things come first. I have to recognize the trade-off I make, and embrace it, because otherwise I'd just be unhappy, and that's not really an option for me. So yeah, maybe eventually I'll write something else, but it'll be awhile, so don't nobody hold their breath.
2010-01-08
: RPGirl Zine PDF
posted by Emily
Hello & Happy New Year!
At long last, the RPG = Role Playing Girl 2009 zine is available in pdf. You can order it at the RPGirl Zine website:
http://rpgirl-zine.blogspot.com/
The zine has an article by Meg on running Storming the Wizard's Tower for kids at her son's school, and reflections on the girls in the group, an article by Jenni Sands Dowsett about playing cross-gender, and a trio of articles about the experience of being women in the role playing game industry by Jen Seiden Schoonover, Charlotte Law, and me!
The zine also has bio and publication information on 25 women in the table top rpg field: artists, writers, independent publishers, editor and more. And a long section of resource listings about projects by and for women online, in publication, events and so on. And listings for folks with game related skills available for you to work with on your project.
This was a labor of love, and I look forward to seeing what more happens under the RPGirl banner. There is a lot of interest in doing another zine in 2010. I'd love to see a real international collection of articles! Drop us a line if you are interested in getting involved.
2009-12-23
: Penny Adventures
posted by Meguey
When I was a kid, I'd play D&D for days with my sister and the neighbor kids. Then sometimes we'd have to go on a car trip. What to do, what to do. I think it began out of sheer desperation.
"You are standing in a hallway running east and west. There's a door in front of you. What do you do?" And we're off and playing. Use a penny for any challenge, and the player is themselves, as an adventurer. So no super-human abilities, but if she can justify having something, she does. I think we found a place to inventory some basic stuff fairly soon. It was fun and simple and extremely portable. I basically followed my-sister-as-the-PC around, tossed monsters and treasure at her in equal parts, and when there was a conflict, we tossed a coin. Heads you win, tails you lose, and either way, the PC gets to narrate hwo it happens.
Emily thinks I should maybe write this one up. Hmm.
2009-12-17
: Games for Epimas
posted by Emily
Snow is in the air. Lights are on the trees. The sky is getting darker and we're all thinking warm thoughts and looking forward to good food with friends. It must be Epimas season!
To celebrate, our games are available through Epiclaus until December 24th as part of a special holiday deal. Purchase one game for a friend, which will be sent to them on the 24th, and receive a second one for yourself for free. You get to choose from our games: 1001 Nights, Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, Under my Skin, as well as the goods from lumpley games, ndpdesign and Dig 1000 Holes.
Wishing you happy holidays, and a lovely year's close and new beginning!
2009-11-23
: Wayback Machine: Primetime Adventures Memories
posted by Emily
Back some time ago, I put together a TV schedule full of Primetime Adventures game write-ups. I'd forgotten about it, and just came across it again today.
Primetime Adventures Lineup
The Hare and Hound still ranks as one of my single best role-playing game experiences.
Thanks, Matt. :)
2009-10-22
: Open Letter to the Game Industry
posted by Emily
A group of women has posted a living document, a letter to the gaming industry, stating their experiences and asking for awareness and dialogue. From the letter:
Dear Game Industry;
We are the women who play, write, design, create art for, and love your games. We play video games from first person shooters online to Wii Fit. We have top of the line gaming machines and old play stations we keep running with gum and shoe polish. We know every game coming out next month and we have been playing the same copy of Doctor Mario since we bought it years ago, used. We are also table top players and LARPers. We have invested thousands of dollars in collectible card games and miniatures for war simulation games. In some cases we are 40% of the market, and we are 50% of the population.
Despite all that, there are times when many of us feel neglected or forgotten.
The blog encourages participation by women gamers. They ask for uplifting stories of women in the industry. And they also ask for the hard stuff. Things that went wrong, or that show the challenges we have yet to face.
This is 100% inspiring. Go check it out! Participate!
A Letter to the Game Industry
2009-10-14
: Runes
posted by Emily
Back some time ago, I made a set of runes for folks to use online. They are just a basic 24 of the Old Futhark. They have the Germanic names here, though I tend to think of them using the Anglo-saxon names, myself. But if you'd like a quick reading, go cast three, and check out the interpretations here.
Wishing you joy, play and bounty.
2009-09-28
: Happy Banned Books Week
posted by Emily
Read one today!
2009-09-22
: The latest in fiction technology
posted by Emily
Cyberphage
In a metaphorical Soviet Russia, a young techno-obsessed geek stumbles across an enchanted sword, which spurs him into conflict with murderous robots with the help of a leather-clad female in shades and her closet full of assault rifles, culminating in authorial preaching through the mouths of the characters.
This story compliments of:
Wondermark's Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre Fiction Generator 2000
2009-09-10
: Cues part 2
posted by Emily
From anyway:
Simon Roger wrote:
This is so true. In Trail of Cthulhu, everyone has a Drive - the thing which makes them go into the dark basement. There is a small mechanical reward for following your Drive into danger, and a penalty for not doing so.
There hasn't been a single playtest or reported example of actual play where someone has had to apply the penalty. The existence of the Drive mechanic, and the Drive itself written on the character sheet is enough to affect play alone.
When is a mechanic, not a mechanic? When it's a simple, functioning cue.
Vincent is making some great points about game mechanic subsystems and the dynamics (ie the soul) of a game, over on anyway. When we look at the procedures of play, we understand them so far: how their economies interact, what actions certain incentives will make likely, the kinds of choices and resources available to the players. Great. But this still leaves some dimensions outside of our view. The emotional and the inspirational, at least.
The emotional parts are things like the heart-pumping excitement Vincent talks about Pit giving you. This comes about because there are no turns, everyone is doing it at the same time. If you each took a turn to trade cards, like in most card games, you'd get the feeling you do when playing Old Maid or Rummy. You would need more complicated choices for it to be exciting. Well, not in Old Maid, but it is a game for early learners. Pit's simplicity makes it possible to have the cascading trading going on. One element of complication at a time. But the simultaneous play introduces the dynamic of a race into the simple process of sorting. That's where it get's its zip.
The inspirational parts are the deeper, fictional implications of all that is in play. This is where we get to the cue business. Simon's example is an excellent one. Similarly, the best interests in In a Wicked Age..., and the issues in Primetime Adventures do not have any mechanical impact. They don't represent any metagame resources, they don't provide any advantage or disadvantage, they don't trigger any processes. But what they do is create a large body of fictional material that follows from them. They give you ideas, and inspire play. They may give you leverage.
And they don't need any incentives to do that. They don't need any mechanical reinforcement because they are directly shaping the fiction, rather than using dynamics created by their interaction with other things and their emotional effects on the players, and likely a host of other things (though, of course to confuse matters more, they have those non-mechanical effects too), to move play forward. The interests, drive and issues become organizing principles in the game. That is their effect. They are, I think, strong attractors, as Markus Montola talks about in his essay on rpg games as chaotic systems*. They create ripples that are followed by others, that open the way and bring about movement in the plot and motivation in the characters. They are tremendous tools for players and GMs, and they don't need any external (or meta) incentive at all.
There are a host of things that function this way. Most of setting in many games does so. Though often aspects of setting become married to mechanical representations. It matters a great deal whether you are playing circus performers or sword-slinging rogues at the get go about what you will imagine happening in the game, it will set permissions and expecations galore before play ever starts. But, of course, your sword will likely be given weight fictionally through mechanical stats, though your facepaint or tiny, tiny car might not get similar treatment. Or they might, depending on the system! But in some ways, they've already done their work, long before a die is rolled or points are purchased.
So, I'm probably wrong about that "simple" up there, but I think we're on the getting a glimpse of the world of effects things in game have outside of the mechanics.
*If you read Markus' article (which I recommend) do take a look at the list of integrative methods for gms, larpwrights and players on p. 161. It is a profile of elements characteristic of "system matters"-on games.