God-Kings

This is one of my oldest games. I can't tell you how many drafts it's gone through – a bunch, let's say. I was waiting for feedback on Mission to Mount Place, so dug up the old book for God-Kings I'd abandoned a couple years ago and finished it. I had a really good testing session last night, so I'm updating the board components now.

The old board. I'm recycling some of these components now, cause I don't want to bake and decorate plasticine chips again.

Tea and Theology, underway.

This game has everything I want in a game – ethics, freedom of choice, complete integration of mechanics and narrative. No wizards, I guess. Or cannibals. I used to want cannibals in every game. I once put cannibals in a game I dedicated to my mother – players compete to acquire an exclusive mining contract to an asteroid in outer space. I think when I remake that game I'll include global warming (it was already a scrutinization of strip-mining and agribusiness practice).

God-Kings is a war game, except game play changes according to the season you're in – ie., you have to feed your followers, or they starve in Winter. That's where the cannibalism would come in, if it were part of this game.


Yes, so, this thing. It's a new component, to replace the obsolete ones from previous versions. You put a little moon on it and it tells you what season you're in, to make sure no one's confused about that.

I used to make up fancy mnemonic artifacts like this instead of writing rule books, but that method makes transmission slow and revision difficult. You have to personally adjudicate every session, which is terrible for several reasons when you're testing a game; and you have to craft everything over again when you realize your rules are ridiculous.


That's why the Priest tokens in this version have little omegas. They used to be Knights. No one ever really understood that the omegas were horseshoes, so it should be a easy transition.

Life is Lies: Cuates

In this one, the aliens don't speak any English at all. I couldn't exactly tell you why I insist on making it illegible; I mean, I could, but it's an overarching ideological thing that's somewhat apart from the comic. Ask me after the show —

Skullminoes

I was trying to make a game a while back. I really got into dominoes, and Scrabble – tile-laying games – so I wanted to try and do something that operated on some sort of related principle.


I think the premise was that everyone is a wizard looking for a door into a parallel dimension, or something. I clearly get derailed at "wizard" every time, but what can you do. Plus, really, how can you improve on dominoes? I am a crack hand at dominoes – don't want to fight me, bro; I'm fast as lightning bro; you better use your Nikes, bro.

So, but – I stamped out all the cards, and they sat around for a while. I figured I might as well repurpose them. Now I have a whole bunch of business cards that people especially like getting on Halloween, but generally find Hot Topical.

Baby Box

I'm never really satisfied with the way I title things. Essays, comics, whatever. Except Mission to Mount Place, that's the best title ever. Except it's not the actual title. Anyway, I'm working on a new comic, and I think I'm going to call it Baby Box. For better or worse, obviously.

It's about an ogre.

He's friends with a bird man. The bird man is sort of like a tengu.

He's also friends with a tiny troll that turns into a cat. This is based on some folktales. They are the best.

I don't know when this is going to happen, but you'll be the first to know, obviously.

Kromdor, Being of Evil

In college I did art for a humor magazine, contributing incidentals for amidst articles. At a later point they picked up a comic strip I was doing:

Kromdor, Being of Evil


Aside from his vague resemblance to a Klan member, he wasn't all that evil. Stealing lollipops, giving homeless people Canadian change. Sometimes I still sketch him; above you see an excellent recent opportunity to test purple markers. But, I was going through an old folder and I realized I had a couple of these that I never submitted to the magazine.

Sometimes the strip is convoluted and bizarre. Sometimes it's really, really simple. Usually it's about spelling mistakes.† His evil minions are a green onion and a porcupine (now ghost porcupine – he died very early on). Below is the run where the porcupine's ghost appears.





That is some serious stuff. I'm pretty sure I drew them while I was a substitute teacher at a boarding school in Vermont, because they're on the back of a worksheet for like, Oliver Cromwell. It wasn't really Cromwell, or the Commonwealth, but yeah, something like that.

_____________________

†This led to another, unattempted strip – Metaphot, Devourer of Words – based on typos. Actually, I have a lot of excellent emails that would serve the idea well.

Life is Lies: IDs

This was a fun one. Now it's up!


Recently I dug out some sketches I'd done and defaced them in the name of Science. Stuff like a Tabasco bottle, a cyclops I guess, or a robot, whatever you draw when you're sitting around in a bar. Mostly these guys, though. I get tired of coloring things in digitally, right, and I like limited palettes; so, let's go, markers –

This was the original idea for London, and I'm glad I didn't go with it.

That said, it did lead to a different, excellent idea.

This one just isn't right for those aliens, but at least I finally drew his pint glass proportionally large. Right, I mean – they're three feet tall, and they're always holding regular-sized glasses. I figure they get little shot glasses of beer. Or no one serves them. Or
EVERYONE SERVES THEM.

(that last bit makes sense if you read this week's comic).

Holy Grail, Batman

I made this wheel to accompany the game after I wrote last week's post, and proceeded to cannonball through to actually writing the rulebook. It's more of a manual – seventeen pages. I finished the second draft last night, and now that I've scanned this wheel (the Wheel of Fortune; a decidedly unfortunate coincidence), I can slip it into the .pdf for that sort-of polished look. Man, the stand-in wheel image...

... is actually kind of awesome, come to think of it. Check out this sketch page:


Man, then there's this tanuki over there, and my super out-of-practice hiragana – which is from last year, I've been reviewing a lot recently. Oh guh, look at my silly math, too. I wish I still knew how to do synthetic division.

Below is the actual wheel. Someone asked me if it's supposed to spin, but the game uses dice. You keep this alongside the game to refer to for when you roll little foot-jabbing tetrahedrons. Then you meet a... Mushroom, or whatever.


I'm really excited to have written up these rules. I had a bunch of other things I meant to post, and an exam to study for, but I spent the better part of last week working on the game. This morning I had a bout of insomnia, so I painted the playing pieces. The yellows may be dry enough to finish, I should go do them and fall asleep.

Now that I look at the rules again, I kind of do want to call it Mission to Mount Place. Not for now though – that'd require redrawing the playing tiles, and I'm not signing those papers til I see some testing.