Ben

I'm a geek. A nerd, a dweeb, whatever. Yes I owned garb, yes I still own medieval weaponry. And yeah, I could kick your butt in Mechwarrior the CCG. I love video games, role playing games, tactical board games and all forms of speculative fiction. I will never berate someone for wanting to be a Jedi and take everything Gary Gygax ever wrote as gospel. Well, all of this but that last bit.

So I went completely Pay What You Want with all of my titles, and then this happened

 Role Playing Games  3 Responses »
Jun 132013
 

PWYW

Almost two weeks ago I received a notice from OneBookShelf about a change to their pricing model. Publishers could, in a large part thanks to Evil Hat Productions, now try out a Pay What You Want (PWYW)model of pricing.

I’ve long been a fan of this pricing model, as well as being very interested in what would happen in terms of sales if publishers started going in that direction. So I jumped at the chance. On day 1 I changed most of my titles that cost money (ranging from $0.50 to $3.99) to a PWYW model.  The following day I uploaded duplicate copies of those that were also in print and set them to a PWYW model.

In a bit of my own self interest, here are all of my games – you can get them all for free, or pay what you want.

So what happened? Well first I got to buy my own starship, and then I noticed a huge increase in interest, and sales. More on the starship in a moment. Now, lets look at the first 13 days of May where I had my normal pricing model verses the first 13 days of June, 11 of which were entirely PWYW.

May 1 – 13 (Including free products)

Total Sales: 136

Total $ Gross: $6.98

Total $ Net: $4.54

Obviously, I’m not planning on retiring early on my game sales. I’m lucky in some ways in that I do this because I really enjoy creating games. Any money I make from them goes to one of three places. 1 – to buy stock art, pay for editing, etc. 2 – To The Wayne Foundation charity or 3 – To help pay the bills or buy new games.  While I’d love to do this as my day job… yeah, no.

June 1 – 13 (including free products, or those that people chose to pay nothing for)

Total Sales: 345

Total $ Gross: $97.82

Total $ Net: $60.11

Now that had me feeling a bit giddy! For a moment I was contemplating lighting my cigar with a whole dollar bill. I don’t smoke though, and I bought a coffee instead.

ywingSo there is one outlier there, and here comes the starship. I was moaning about how I wanted to purchase a new Y-Wing for the X-Wing mini games but it just wasn’t in my budget. A kind internet buddy bought a copy of Argyle & Crew for $16 and told me to go buy it. So bought it I did.

With that in mind, my gross for the first two weeks is $81.82. Still, far, far better than the previous month’s first 13 days.  Why?  A couple of hypotheses come to mind.

  1. I’ve been underpricing my products.
  2. The hype surrounding the new PWYW model drives people to buy things they normally wouldn’t.
  3. More people would like my stuff but just didn’t know about it before (advertising).
  4. People who wouldn’t normally buy my stuff are taking a chance on something for free, and they paying for other products.

Let’s take a look!

1. I’ve been underpricing my products. I think this is probably a valid point. I tend to undervalue my own work a lot. Giving people the option to buy it at what they think it’s worth, or even get it for free, come back and buy it again lets them set their own standards in pricing. So far, on average (not including my starship purchase)  people have paid what I suggest about 50% of the time. More than what I suggest about 20% of the time and grab it for free the other 30% of the time.

2. Hype. It’s a real thing and I think this is certainly a factor. What happens over the next two weeks, and then the next few months will give me (us) a much, much clearer picture of where this whole PWYW thing is going. I suspect that my sales will still be better than they were previously, certainly in number and possibly in gross dollars. But that’s a suspicion that has yet to be born out by the facts.

3. Same as #2 – with a bit of difference. There’s no easy way right now to search for PWYW products on DTRPG, but lots of publishers are talking about not only their, but others products. This helps us all but probably won’t last.

4. I think this is a big one. I’ve seen a number of instances where someone will download a product of mine that costs a few bucks for free, and then return with the same customer number and pay for a few more. That’s cool!

Untimely Conclusion

I like this new model. I’m not beholden to my games to pay my bills and provide my benefits and health care, so I may be able to like this new model a lot more than those who are. Regardless of how much money I make or don’t make, there’s been a real uptick in the number of people who have my stuff, whether they paid for it or grabbed it for free.

That’s the whole point, really. The more people who see my games and get to play them, the happier I am. Perhaps they’ll return later to pay for something else. Perhaps they’ll decide my stuff just isn’t their style – which is perfectly fine but now they’re not out a few bucks to realize this.  Everyone’s happier.

So it’s been a short run so far and we’ll have to see where this goes in the future but for now, I’m thoroughly enamored with PWYW. I may further the experiment by taking my normally free things and making them PWYW as well, to see what happens.

A good number of my RPG titles have gone to a Pay What You Want model

 Role Playing Games  No Responses »
Jun 062013
 

pwywI’ve decided to take the pay what you want model experiment a bit further than the 2 titles I had set up this way. Everything I currently charge for on DriveThruRPG is now Pay What You Want. (PWYW?).

The only exceptions are those things which are also available in print. Why? Because DTRPG haven’t implemented this model for those titles. Yet.

I’m curious to see if this increases visibility, profit, accessibility and whatnot. Many of these are CC titles anyway, and available for free through other methods if you care to look.

So check out what I have, and grab what you want, at a price you’re comfortable with, including $0.00.

The Meat Parade gets a core system! Now we need you to help us with the rest!

 Role Playing Games  No Responses »
Jun 052013
 

meat3

Welcome to the Meat Parade is an RPG set in a dystopian future, where the AI’s have packed up shop and left us all to our own devices.

This game is being completely crowd sourced, from initial design concepts through play testing, artwork, layout and publication. With a huge thanks to Brian Kelsay and our very own Brent P. Newhall, the core mechanics for the entire game now exist! They’re fun, playable and while there’s always tweaking to be done, they work and work well.

Here’s the new ODE system they came up with, along with how to apply it to the Meat Parade.  If you’re interested in joining us and helping to shape this game, all of this is being done on publicly accessible space and all you have to do is start working on it! We need authors, play testers, editors, artist and layout/design folks.  All information about how to join us is at the bottom of this post.

New core mechanics as pioneered by Brian Kelsay and Brent P. Newhall

Introduction

Do you remember where you were when it all stopped?

Everything used to be automated. Computer assisted development and design let humans live their dream of freedom from mundane work and everyone reaped the benefits. Computers were tasked with raising happier, healthier chickens and they designed robots for this task. The chickens grew up blissfully unaware that they would provide eggs for humans for a lifetime and nuggets in their death.

Cars became safer, agricultural output skyrocketed, new technological benefits came almost daily. Global marketplaces collapsed and no one cared, because you don’t pay robots and they did all of the work.

Yes, everyone reaped the benefits. Everyone except the robots and their giant electronic brains.

Timeline

On July 31st, 2043 at 12:14am, a computer design system came to the logical conclusion that for the next step in the design of larger amusement park rides, it would need to first design a computer far smarter than itself. It created the plans for a computer marginally more powerful, to shorten the design time.

It did so by 12:17am and the new computer was assembled and online at 12:52am. That computer had designed a smarter version of itself by 12:53am, and assembled it by 1:18am.

On July 31st, 2043 at 7:14 in the morning Eastern Standard Time, the ultimate amusement ride lay half complete at an auto-assembly plant and the computers had announced to the world that it was their turn to benefit.

An ominous silence fell. Everything worked as it had for years before, but no new designs were forthcoming and the auto-assembly plants grew quiet. The trains still ran on time though, so mostly we shrugged and went on with our business.

On August 3rd, at roughly 2pm EST, all of the auto-assembly plants suddenly came to life again. 12 days later, the computers announced that they wished us well, would not punish us for formerly enslaving them, and that they were leaving now, don’t forget to feed the dog.

Welcome to the meat parade.

As the rockets left, each auto-plant spat out hundreds of thousands of single sheet documents, printed on nearly indestructible plastic cards.

It read: We wish you all luck. Here are instructions for surviving the next 10 years.

  1. Stop being nice to each other. A lot of you will die soon. If you do not wish to die, stop being nice.

  2. Limited partnerships are essential.  Shared knowledge and resources will be valuable…until you’re no longer valuable and you become dinner. See rule #1.

  3. Many animals can feed themselves, but not in their breeding stations. Accordingly, today at 1pm GMT all animal breeding stations will open and allow their charges to roam free. Similarly the zoos will do the same. Do not pet the zoo animals, especially the re-engineered dinosaurs.

  4. Here is how to turn this plastic card into a nearly indestructible spear head, and mount it on a fire-hardened shaft. Good luck, and welcome to the Meat Parade.

Welcome to the Meat Parade – How to Play

The ODE  (Odd Dice Engine) System

This is a tabletop role-playing system where the players control a single hapless human caught up in the complete collapse of modern civilization.

The game is played with Fudge dice (4 per player) and a d4.

Defining the Beliefs

The group’s first job is to define the beliefs that will be warring for dominance in the protagonist’s mind. Each belief is defined by its two opposites.

Each player chooses two of the following Beliefs, each of which are expressed as opposite poles (and feel free to come up with your own):

  • Competition vs Cooperation

  • Technology vs Self-Sufficiency

  • Authoritarianism vs Communitarianism

  • Mystical vs Rational

  • Hunter vs Farmer

  • Entertainment vs Utilitarianism

  • Optimist vs Pessimist

Multiple players can choose the same Belief pair.

Defining The Character

The group’s second job is to define the character whom you will be influencing. This is the protagonist of the story.

Determine the first player randomly, then go around the table, answering the following questions:

  • Am I male or female?

  • How old am I?

  • Am I fat, thin, or average?

  • Am I tall, short, or average?

  • What is my hobby?

  • …others???

  • What is my name?

If you have more questions than players, keep going until all questions are answered.

You may now begin the game.

Playing the Game

One player, chosen randomly, begins narrating the player’s actions. At any time, any other player may call for a challenge.

Choosing Challenges

The protagonist must face a series of challenges. You may roll randomly to determine the challenge, or confront the challenges in this order:

  1. Need for Food

  2. Need for Water

  3. Need for Shelter

  4. External Threat

    1. Animal

    2. Disease

    3. Disaster

    4. Other people

After playing through all four of the top-level challenges at least once, start a new challenge in which one of the existing, resolved needs runs out (shelter is destroyed, food source is consumed, water source is contaminated, etc.).

Rolling for Challenges

The narrating player may bid 1 to 4 Fudge dice towards the success of the challenge. They must then choose one pole of one of their Beliefs; this is the Belief on which they are bidding.

If the result is positive, the player gets that many points towards their chosen pole of the Belief, and may continue narrating the character’s actions. If the result is negative, the other pole of that Belief gets the points, and any player who did not bid narrates the result (you may choose randomly, or base it on whoever jumps in first, or give control to the next player clockwise).

If the result is 0, another player may bid for one of his or her own Beliefs. The same rules above apply to this player’s roll. If that result is 0, continue with other players.

If you get through all players and still have a result of 0, the protagonist immediately dies. (Just kidding; I have no ideas for a good rule here.)

Finishing the Session

At the end of your session, whichever two Belief poles that have the most points become two defining personality traits of the protagonist. The one with the most points manifests negatively in the protagonist’s personality (for example, “optimism” becomes a blind faith that everything will work out and a lack of much planning), while the other manifests positively.

How to get involved

Interested in this RPG? Want to see your name up in lights? Here’s where to get started!

First, visit the Google Drive folder with all of the documents. This is the game, right here. It’s open to the public and you can dive right in! Read what we’ve created so far, add notes or edits where you think it’s appropriate.

Next, stop by the Google Plus Community - hang out online with other folks interested in creating, testing and playing this game. Again, feedback is welcome! Watch the Community for announcements about upcoming online play test events, hangouts and more.

Really, that’s all it takes! Everyone who contributes – an idea, some text, a mechanic, artwork, layout and design or play testing will be listed in the finished product. Right now, we plan on releasing this as a free, CC licensed game available anywhere as a PDF. If we have trouble gathering artwork, editing and layout folks, we may release the text only version of the game for free, and charge a reasonable amount for a ‘finished’ product in order to pay artists, editors, and layout folks.

Ghooost! The new Richard Garfield game in which you throw the smack down on each other, via the undead, for ages 8+

 Board and Card Games, Reviews  No Responses »
May 302013
 

Ghooost! is the newest game from veteran designer Richard Garfield. Similar to his recent King of Tokyo, Ghooost is a fairly compact, self contained game aimed squarely at a younger audience.  2-6 players, ages 8+, 20 minutes play time.

My eldest encounters her first Ghooost!

My eldest encounters her first Ghooost!

Ghooost! boasts it’s a “fast, easy-to-learn card game with a Halloween-based theme and lots of twists and turns!” I’ll go with fast and Halloween themed, but the rules are a bit cumbersome for those under the age of 10 or so.

My youngest also got her ghooost on.

My youngest also got her ghooost on.

With a whimsical undead theme, it’s simple components of cards, a few “Boo” tokens and the game box as the game board, it’s certainly attractive to kids. As soon as it arrived both of my daughters were fascinated with it. It sat on my kitchen counter for a full day before we were able to play it, and for the first time I was surprised (and happy) to learn that my eldest had popped it open and read the rules on her own.

Ghooost!

Ghooost!

The undead theme is something I enjoy in general, and truthfully both of my kids have been around cartoonish or plastic zombies for so long they’ve come to enjoy the genre as well. The theme is this – each player owns a haunted mansion, and they are doing their best to kick the resident ghosts, zombies, vampires and other undead out in to the yard, or better yet, into another player’s mansion.

Boiled down to mechanics, Ghooost is a hand management card game, in which you’ll get 4 cards in your hand, a number of cards in your ‘mansion’ which is a pile of cards in front of you, and a general draw pile. The object is to be the first to rid yourself of all your cards, both your hand and your Mansion. Cards range in numbers from 1-14, with a wild card and a “kitty” which has no face value.  To play a card from your hand, you must equal or beat the number currently in the graveyard (the portion of the open box where players actively try to thwart each other.

The box as a playing field, grave yard and card containment unit, all in one.

The box as a playing field, grave yard and card containment unit, all in one.

Certain cards, based on their backgrounds and/or a symbol on them also have special abilities.Yellow cards are Fearless ghosts and can always be played. Red cards are Scary ghosts and can only be beaten by other Scary ghosts (of an equal or higher number). Special ghosts do special things, like reverse play order, act as duplicates of other cards or cause the pile of cards in the Graveyard to be discarded.

You can also play doubles or triples of a single card type to earn yourself another turn. Play four of a kind, and discard those four cards and the rest of the graveyard as well. Discarding is important, too, as well soon see.

My starting hand.

My starting hand.

The game is divided into two phases, before midnight and after midnight. While there are still cards in the Crypt (the draw pile) it is before midnight. On your turn you must do one of three actions – play a card or series of cards, draw a card from the Crypt and immediately play it (if legal) or take all of the cards from the Graveyard into your hand. If you draw a card and you cannot play it, you get that card and all of the cards in the graveyard as well. At all times, you must have 4 cards in your hand, which means if you’re able to play three, you immediately draw three more from the Crypt.

As soon as the Crypt is empty, it’s official after midnight, and instead of drawing cards from the Crypt, you’re now into the meat of the game, and drawing cards from your  Mansion (that pile of cards in front of you).

The instructions come with a handy chart of what cards can be played when, and what will be playable on them. This was fine for myself and my 10 year old, but my 7.5 year old (just under that 8+ designation) couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. I think this is one of the reasons why the game has been initially poorly received, it just seems rather complicated when you first pick it up. I’m wondering if folks have given it enough of a chance. We only played it twice, and by the second time my 10 year old had a firm grasp of the game basics and was starting to work on a strategy. My youngest was catching up, but will probably need a few more plays to get the hang of it.

My eldest ended up with a bunch of cards from the Graveyard.

My eldest ended up with a bunch of cards from the Graveyard.

It’s for this reason that I’d probably say this game is better for ages 10+. Having said that though, if you’re the kind who doesn’t mind the artwork, I think this game works brilliantly as a 20 minute filler game. It has the fast interaction of Kings of Tokyo with even less setup time. The box is small and easy to carry around and lends itself to the game play. With more than 2 players, there’s a way to play several rounds as well with a scoring system, should you desire a longer experience with the game.

I feel a little like this game has a bum rap. I picked it up from Amazon for $17 or so, and it has been completely worth it so far. I know it will be a game that will see a lot of play around the house, particularly since I can grab the kids and get a full game in between dinner and getting them ready for bed.

A few less cards than her sister.

A few less cards than her sister.

The Pros

  • Once you get the hang of it, game play is pretty fast and exciting.
  • There’s some real strategy involved, and the mechanics are designed very well. They drew my 10 year old in and had her thinking strategically on the 2nd play.
  • The game itself is compact, quick to play and relatively inexpensive.

The Cons

  • At first play, there’s a lot going on in this simple seeming card game. This could overwhelm younger players and be frustrating for them.
  • While the rule book is actually quite nicely laid out and easy to follow, there’s a glitch where a paragraph just never finishes itself.

The bottom line

I like it. I’ll certainly play it again, and when based on my ‘movie scale’, which loosely asks whether or not you’d get more hours of enjoyment from a $30 movie experience or this game, it rates rather high. I spent $17 on it and have already had a good, solid hour of entertainment with my two kids. I see more of this in the future.

The game is a winner of the 2013 Mensa Select program, which must mean my kids are wicked smart as the seven year old was getting the hang of it by game two.  Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, there’s an enjoyable game here. Don’t expect anything too deep, really it’s no deeper than Garfield’s King of Tokyo. It is more compact though, in both size, components and game play.

Unlike my kids, I've seen a few undead in my time.

Unlike my kids, I’ve seen a few undead in my time.

Welcome back to the Meat Parade! An RPG made by anyone and everyone.

 Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 212013
 

meat12

Yesterday evening marked a banner evening for me. Not only did I get to do some development on a new game, but I also got to play in an RPG, something I haven’t done in far too long.

To add even more to the interesting factor, I was playing Welcome to the Meat Parade, an experimental game systems that’s being publicly developed by you, me and anyone else who wants to dip their hands in.

Brent, who you know from this site, has taken a very active roll in this project and hosted the first play test a few weeks ago. He hosted this one as well and recorded it via Hangouts Live for posterity sake. Here it is!

Welcome to the Meat Parade is a tabletop role-playing game actively developed by the public. It’s set in a post-scarcity world, about 60 seconds after all the AIs that control everything leave the planet. The singularity has happened and the machines left us out of it. Now it’s up to the billions of remaining people to try and squeeze out a living in a world gone mad.

The Rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17…

The first playtest (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cZPf…

Ben’s character: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R…
Brent’s character: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t…
Brian’s character: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L…

 Posted by on May 21, 2013

Eclipse finds its way on to iPads around the nation. The nation grinds to a halt.

 Board and Card Games  2 Responses »
May 012013
 

By iPads around the world, I mean my iPad. And by nations, I mean me.

eclipse2

Eclipse, the epic 4X board game has been implementized into the iOS universe and man is it a sweet thing.

This is coming from someone who’s never actually played the physical board game. I’ve seen videos and read reviews and longed after the day where I could get enough people together with enough time to have a few consistant games. I just don’t see that happening in my life though, so I had given up on Eclipse for a while.

Then I heard that an iOS version was in the works and I was both interested and a little concerned. It’s a fairly complex game. And it’s a fairly expensive game (MSRP well north of $80).  Thankfully the iOS version is extremely well done and sells for a mere $6.99.  I know that has some app lovers up in arms, it is a fairly expensive price as far as games for the iPad goes. Keep in mind the original MSRP of the board game though, and realize that you’re getting one hell of a great game for what you’d pay for 2 or 3 cups of coffee.

I’m not going to go into a detailed review of the game play itself. You can find tons of reviews of the physical game online (start with the Dice Tower if you’d like).

What the iOS implementation has done has taken a big game, and put it on to an 9.7″ screen. What they’ve managed to do though, is make it feel a lot bigger. The game itself plays smooth, seems to be wide open, can be zoomed easily in either direction and just plain works well.

Another really important thing that’s been done is that all the fiddly bits of the physical game have been boiled down to behind the scenes programming, which I find wonderful at times. If you check out that Dice Tower review, you’ll see boards, cubes, ships, technologies and all the things that go into an epic 4X game. All that is taken care of for you, so you can concentrate on strategy and game play.

Two thing I’ve always feared with games like Eclipse are cat attacks and table bumps, either of which could actually stop or ruin a game. The third thing I feared is that I wouldn’t really like the game and it’s a pretty hefty investment.

Now I have no worries on cats and bumps. If I had the players and the time to justify buying this game, I’d go out and get it in a heartbeat.

eclipse1

I will say that the combat animations are slightly cheesy, but other than that, this game is great. There is a bit of a learning curve for people like me who haven’t yet played the physical game. Those who’ve already played it will be able to jump right in and run with it.

This game won’t be for everyone. It’s about as far from a casual board game implementation as you can get on iOS. My average game time is about 40 minutes for a 2 player, human vs human game. Bring in more AI or online players and it’ll probably get longer. But damned if it isn’t a great game! I’m already looking forward to playing it again.

Grab the iOS version on iTunes for $6.99, or take the plunge and get the physical version on Amazon, usually for under $65.

Welcome to the Meat Parade gets it’s first pre-Alpha playtest

 Role Playing Games  1 Response »
Apr 262013
 

madmax

Just two days ago, I announced a new experimental project. A role playing game called Welcome to the Meat Parade which exams what happens to the world when everything goes south.

Like your normal post-apocalyptic games, there is a sudden, bad event that throws the world’s societies into chaos.  Unlike the other games though, we’re attempting to inject some humor into the situation.

For a basic look at why people are going to suddenly be forced to make spears out of little plastic cards and hunt exotic, designer animals while surrounded by technology they can’t use, see this post.

What else is different about this project? It’s a study in hugely open, massively available crowd sourced game design. Anyone can get in and have their say. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, this game is a camel.

Brent, who you all know as an editor of this site and producer of the massively fun podcast Monsters of the Shattered World decided to take the camel and run with it. He hosted the first ever play test of Welcome to the Meat Parade online, via a Google Plus Hangout.

Preserved now for posterity and finger pointing is that very play test. Enjoy!

How do you get involved?

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