Diary of a Failed Game Designer

The blog is not dead, I have just been busy with other projects and real life at work stuff the past month. Currently playing: RPG's We have been playing World Wide Wrestling RPG on when else ... Monday nights. We skipped last monday due to the aforementioned distractions. We had a big show with a title tournament and all sorts of chaos / interruptions / stipulations at our last show. ( Hear it all Here ) Our next show is going to be  dealing with the fallout from that show and perhaps debuting the women's division. There is currently a kickstarter for  a second book supporting  the  World Wide Wrestling game , this new book covering Wrestling from Japan and Mexico as well as other  permutations of the sport. That's right in my wheelhouse since I have been a fan of Wrestling from Japan since the  early 90's. All I can say is I for one am looking forward to the new material. My D&d 5th game is on hiatus . The part was left making trade agreements with so...

Playing World Wide Wrestling the RPG. OR It’s still real to me damn  it! I have said before on this blog (and for the record taken some heat for it,) that I feel Nathan Paoletta's World Wide Wrestling RolePlaying game , is the best stab anyone has taken a the world of pro wrestling in the form of an RPG. I stand by that, at least until I find a game I like better. That statement is not  meant to demean anyone who has taken previous shots at the genre. I feel Nathan approached the world of Pro wrestling from a unique angle, that of playing both the  wrestlers and the people behind the gimmicks as they are in the real world. I find this approach to be extremely satisfying, I knew I would from the moment I read the  book. Now that I have had the chance to live in the game for a few sessions I do have one  gripe. I am ( As I have stated before ) Not a fan of the Apocalypse World (AW) RPG engine. I have never been able to put my finger on exactly why, but for our gro...

The world’s tallest dwarf meets the Amber Symbiant. We played a game of AAIE last Saturday, which I touched on a bit in my last post. That previous post was all about the good vibes I got from the game today I’m going to talk about the game itself. Doing an “actual play” style retelling would be damn near impossible, the post would go on forever. Besides that the game was almost a week ago and details are bound to have escaped my brain to be forever lost to the ether.  * What I am going to do is hit some things that I thought were highlights in the game and how they were handled mechanically. First off for the sake of time everyone rolled up their charters before the game.  In my mind AIEE is at its best, at the table, with everyone rolling up their characters step by step and grimacing at the results.  However, we were playing on Roll20 with people spread over two continents. The whole optimal game set up was impossible. It was for the best, having everyone prepared with...

Tiny Validation: “High my names is Mark, and I write games for my friends.” And that's about it. Over this weekend however I ran one of my games for a couple of people who haven't played the game before, whom I had never ran a game for before. So lets set the scene. A home brew game of dubious quality. Three players I know very well, one player I have played with but never as a GM, and two players who I know but had never directly gamed with. We gamed over Roll 20, (which presents it's own set of issues.) Now here's the thing I have been Game Mastering for a long time, but I don't claim to be great at it. I'm alright , but I'm spoiled by having run for a steady group of some of the best folks you could ever ask to have at a game table. They will tell me if something sucks. They make things fun, good players oil the gears for a DM in a way that setting, and system never will. I am not that guy (I don' feel I am any way I have never tried.) who could pl...

(Third annul Krampus Game , Quick Run down, inaccuracies due to foul memory) This years Krampus game was run under the cypher system, specifically “The Strange” subset of rules. Our team who work for a investigative unit reminiscent of the TV show Warehouse 13 have been tasked to find out why a recursion known as “Halloween land,” (which comes in the form of a Jumanji like board game) was suddenly plunging into winter. Such things just don't happen and could be a threat to reality as we know it so off we went. This was not our groups first encounter with Halloween Land as back in October we were sucked into the board game and had to find our way out. Naturally this lead to none of our character really wanting to have anything to do with that place again. in the end ALL OF reality is a big place and it was up to us to save it. In we went, and indeed the seasons were changing in a recursion that was supposed to be all Halloween all the time. The trick or' treaters huddlin...

Tonight is our game group's third annual Krampus game. The first year Jay ran the game using D&D, and Krampus died . Last year I ran the game using a melange of systems .. Krampus.. Died. This year Neal runs the game, using the cypher system! Can we keep the streak alive? Only time will tell.

In my past few posts I mentioned that I have been working on an RPG called "Shards of Thimbral." This has been kind of an endless project. (You can go back on this blog and look at the  tags if you like that sort of thing.) It's not that I have spent that much time on the project. I have read about people who work on a game for years and years before they are ready to present. What I can say is for all the time I have been kicking the idea of "Shards" around for a couple of years and have shockingly little to show for it. What I do have to show for it is a notebook with ideas, and sketches of bigger ideas. Part of those ideas has always been a very exploration, discovery based game that give the characters ample room to make their own story. It started as "Floating islands in the sky" however, it turns out someone already did that and my ideas were way too close to theirs for my comfort. So I have moved on to actual islands in the sea, which has it...