Monday, November 8, 2010

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.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

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 —

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

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.