NaGaDeMon – Redesigning Previous Cookings

This month marked the beginning of the National Game Design Month 2012. Not actually a game design contest per se, but more like an event where people plan, design, create and play games, supported by other people going through the same process. Since there are no rules or guidelines, I decided to go back to my first Game Chef -game Psykhotherapy, and redesign the game to better fit my original vision.

Main idea

The game is about people who are seeking help for their mental disorders. The characters enter a new form of therapy where they try to help each other to get over their problems by investigating the subconsciousness and trying to find reasons for the problems. During each session, one character is put into a deep, coma-like sleep where the other patients then enter. The Dreamer is the game master of the session, and the others try to understand the Dreamers subconsciousness: The Dark Mind.

Game mechanics

Originally Psykhotherapy had a d12 based mechanic where the characters Abilities were used to calculate the difficulty of success. It was a decent mechanism, but I am not certain if it serves the game and the themes well enough. I have recently been thinking about using a more direct approach, giving the players a resource to use for solving problems they cannot solve otherwise.

Being a group therapy-based game, the game needs to be structured as such. Each session starts and ends with a therapy session where the characters discuss about their problems and share information to each other. This information should be relevant to the characters illness and to the eventual visits to the Dark Mind.

To measure their progress, each character is given their own patient sheet to fill out. The sheet functions both as a character sheet and as a tool for preparing the character’s own Dark Mind. The sheet contains a few questions intended to help the player to create interesting and entertaining characters and their backgrounds.

What’s next?

Since the main idea and some of the mechanics are already written, I don’t have to spend that much time working on them. Instead, I am going to refine the idea and mechanics, and also rewrite all the (poorly written) text of the previous version.

I’ll update once again after I have done some progress.

Game Review – Last Chance to Tell the Tale of Coyote and Medicine Man by Bryan Hansel

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I will be reviewing some games as a part of the Game Chef 2012 contest. This is the fourth and last review.

Introduction

The game is about telling the tales of the creation in the spirit of campfire-stories, using shadow puppets to narrate the story of Coyote and Medicine Man, two figures who are responsible for both the creation and uncreation of the world. Everything is done in a cooperative manner, from character creation to the actual narration. The game resembles more of a play than a game, which is not a bad thing at all.

Game Review – Heist by Theresa Strike

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I will be reviewing some games as a part of the Game Chef 2012 contest. This is the third review.

Introduction

Heist is a mixture of a roleplaying game and a cooperative board game for four players and a GM.  It is a game about four crooks trying to break in to a bank vault, using the special talents of the crooks to pull it off. But with a limit of three hours (of real time), the stakes are high.

The game includes a map of the bank, premade characters and a list of NPCs and other obstacles for the players to overcome.

Game Review – Beacon of Hope by Shari Corey

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I will be reviewing some games as a part of the Game Chef 2012 contest. This is the second review.

Introduction

Beacon of Hope is a roleplaying game about people chosen to travel through space and time to prove that mankind is ready to move on to the Fourth World, after our world ends in December 2012. The Coyote has sabotaged the Beacon of Hope, and it is up to the player characters to fix the damage and confront Coyote to convince him of the worth of mankind. The game has been written for 3-6 players and a GM, who serves as the narrator for the story and comes up with the ideas about how Coyote has tempered with events of past.

Game Review – Therapy by Charles Boucher

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I will be reviewing some games as a part of the Game Chef 2012 contest. This is the first review.

Introduction

Therapy is a text-based roleplaying game for three players, intended to be played in IRC, forums and other text-based media. In fact, the game strongly discourages face to face contact, since the nature of the game involves some secrecy that could be lost with that.

As the title suggests, the game is about therapy sessions between Doctor and Patient. The third player, GM, organizes these sessions and awards points to the players.

Since the game involves some secret elements, such as the nature of the patients condition, this review contains SPOILERS and should not be read if you plan on trying out the game. Unfortunately that also means that you hardly can know what the game is about unless you read it. That being said, the GM has access to all the information on this game.

Game Chef 2012 – Reviews

As a part of the Game Chef 2012 contest, us Chefs are expected to give feedback to each other. Each Chef was given four games to review. I will make a separate post for each of review, but for the sake of referencing, here are the games I was chosen to review, with links to the games and a small introductory blurb:

Submission #27: Therapy by Charles Boucher
A game within a game with shared characters and hidden player identity, or else just a way for three people to mess with a fourth at length.

My review on Therapy.

Submission #29: Beacon of Hope by Shari Corey
Travel through time to undo Coyote’s sabotage and save humanity-But Coyote travels with you-Can you prove yourselves worthy?

My review on Beacon fo Hope.

Submission #32: Heist by Theresa Strike
Synchronize your watches, because the police are on their way and time is running out.

My review on Heist.

Submission #36: Last Chance to Tell the Tale of Coyote and Medicine Man by Bryan Hansel
Tell the story of creation in this story telling parlor game told at the end of the world. Includes a fire ring and shadow puppets.

My review on Last Chance to Tell the Tale of Coyote and Medicine Man.

To Put Things Right, Finally

After a long and tiresome week, filled with busy schedules and few setbacks, I managed to finish the game! I even had time to do a placeholder cover picture, which I am not really proud of, but it serves to set the mood of the game.

Here’s the official entry:

Chef: Antti Lax
Title: To Put Things Right
Link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13981462/ToPutThingsRight.pdf
Elevator Pitch: Realising that he is living his past again, Doctor begins his Last Chance to save his beloved and Put Things Right. A storytelling game for one player and up to three narrators.
Word Count: 2967 (not counting Credits)
Eligibility: Eligible

So, if you are interested in the game, please check out the final version. I’d really like to hear some comments (beside the official reviews we are going to get). This game has a lot of potential, and I feel like I am going to continue on developing this game after the Game Chef. Possible ideas include enlarging the concept from this one storyline to multiple possible storylines with a full deck of Memories to explore. The way I deal with the characters also might change, and I might write a few separate player characters to choose from.

As it is usually the case with Game Chef, the end of the contest is the beginning of something new.