Red Markets Update

NOT the final product. Though already gorgeous, the cover is still a work in progress.

Though I probably don't need to tell you this by now, I am utter shit at blogging. I will not be improving any time soon. I have made peace with this.

I am terrible at blogging because, when blessed with the time and energy to write, I work on Red Markets. When I have the time but not the energy, I write perfunctory emails to an expanding pool of freelancers and collaborators...working on Red Markets. When I have neither time nor energy enough to write, I talk to Ross on our podcast...about Red Markets. This leaves little left for blogging.

The benefit of all this shameful non-promotion is that 60,000 words of Red Markets are DONE. The entire player chapter is completed, and while changes will still occur, every rule included has undergone five iterations of alpha playtesting. RPPR is currently in the midst of playtesting extended campaign play (listen to us talk about it here).  Furthermore, the freelance writing gigs stealing time away from Red Markets are now complete (listen to the struggle here; read the books that resulted: Firewall and No Soul Left Behind).

So, aside from the day job, things are all-Red Markets, all-the-time over here at Hebanon Games. I'm drafting the GM chapter as the long-form playtest continues. I'm using the additive format of most RPG books, where core rules reside entirely in the player section and the GM chapter sticks to tips, alternatives, and exclusively behind-the-screen functions. This means the GM section should be markedly shorter than the 60K of other rules language. Though we won't be having enough to sell an ashcan at Gencon, there should be enough to start a beta playtest around August for those willing to hack through a Word document.

Which isn't to say Red Markets is only text...

He's a chipper fellow that won't let being declared homo sacer keep him down.

Now that I have a day job again, I've been using the funds from No Security to fund the pre-Kickstarter art, editing, and layout. From experience, I know these upfront costs are essential to make campaigns for big new books a success. I know its a gamble to put too much money up front, but any level of success means that money will not be wasted. It just frontloads costs even more than crowd-sourcing already does.

You've probably already noticed the cover image up top. That's by the magnificently talented Kim Van Deun. She's very enthusiastic about the project, and I'm thrilled to be working with her. Similar praise is owed Patsy McDowell. I've been using his concept sketches in this post and as the face of numerous RPPR GDW episodes. The final piece that resulted is great, but I'm saving it for the KS. Similarly, I'm eager to get some illustration work from long-time collaborator Ean Moody, but he's already contributed by designing the most thematically consistent character sheet I could possible imagine.

THINGS TO COME

I'm going to keep writing, obviously. I'm also going to commission more pieces from the artists mentioned while trying to bring a few more talented people into the fold. Leaving aside numerous possible disasters, the timetable is looking something like...

• June-July: Finish GM section. Commission more promotional art.
• August-September: Closed-beta goes out to other groups.
• August-December: Caleb drafts as much setting material as possible.
• December-January: Playtest reports come in, revisions are made.
• February: Kickstarter planning begins in earnest. I need to build another website in something better than Blogger or Wordpress.
• March-ish: Kickstarter launch. Open-beta goes to all backers.
• Sometime before the heat-death of the universe: a book is born

A lot can go wrong with that timetable, but we are literally as close as we've ever been. I'm hopeful and motivated. I hope you guys are as excited as I am.

I'd promise to keep you informed on this blog, but that's probably a lie. The best chance of keeping update are to follow me at @HebanonGCal and keep listening to RPPR's Game Designer's Workshop.

P.S. As far as I can tell, "Ex Terrorem, Lucrabamur" translates to "out of terror, we profit."

RPPR's Game Designer's Workshop 8: Big Playtest, Big Problems

Red Markets is now in campaign playtesting, so this episode covers what we’ve learned about the game since the campaign began. Hear about the enclave I helped create and what kind of jobs we’ve done. Issues that have arisen solely from campaign issues have appeared that were invisible during one-shot playtesting.

Listen here.

RPPR Game Designer's Workshop 7: Multitasking Mayhem

Ross and I got together to update you all on our progress and talk about one of the major aspects of being a writer: dealing with multiple projects at once. Multitasking is a hard skill to learn, but once you master it, it pays off! We talk about keeping our noses to the grindstone, the benefits of doing multiple projects at once, and other topics. We also talk about Red Markets and Ruin.

Listen here.

RPPR's Game Designer's Workshop: Playtester's Progress

Believe it or not, I am still alive and working on games. Things have been uber-crazy the past year and seem to only be accelerating. You can hear more in-depth updates about my life and game design in the latest episode of RPPR's GDW: Playtester's Progress.

For those of you not of the podcast bent, here's the "too long; don't listen" update on Hebanon Games.

Personal News

Hebanon Games is no longer in immediate danger of going under because it's CEO and entire workforce (i.e. me) starved to death. After an insanely long and arduous job search, I've finally found another teaching position at a school I'm very happy with. The kids need my help, the staff shares my goals, and I'm rewarded for my efforts. It's all-in-all a vast improvement over my previous full-time job, and it pays much better than the hodge-podge mixture of part-time/night-shift/freelance work I'd been surviving off of for the past year.

That said, the commute to my new job is over an hour (one-way), and I'm working under a bigger course-load than I've ever experienced before. The crippling poverty and depression are alleviated, but they've been replaced with a hectic schedule geared away from game design. It's a good thing overall, but production has slowed and will continue to crawl at a snail's pace until the summer.

Time to write full-time again will come though, and I wouldn't have made it long enough to get there were it not for people continuing to support my work by buying into the No Soul Left Behind Kickstarter, purchasing The Devotees, and promoting No Security in print. While that money isn't enough to buy healthcare or anything, it was literally the difference between having a home and being turned out into the street on multiple occasions. I can't thank all of you enough. I never intended this stuff to be a full-time gig, but the fact that it supported my family for the most difficult year of our lives is something for which I will be eternally grateful.

Red Markets

I've been working on my baby this entire time. While progress is slow and piecemeal, I'm light-years closer to completion that I was at the start of this little project. The rules have gone through five rounds of playtesting. At this point, the game runs a mean one-shot, and I've played several successful randomly-generated and designed scenarios with a variety of groups. The rules aren't perfect, but they are definitely at the "tweaking" phase rather than the "throw out and despair" phase.

I have fun running Red Markets, and my friends have fun playing it. That's closer than I could have ever imagined being even six months ago.

Right now, the rules are in "Caleb-ese" (chick-scratch notes that constitute the bare minimum I need to remind myself of things I already know). I'm in the middle of drafting them into legible chapters that other people can use to teach themselves the game. From there, I'll be playtesting the macro rules (campaign play, roleplaying incentives, character advancement, etc) with the RPPR group and distributing a closed Beta playtest to some fans on the forums.

From there, it's just a matter of drafting the macro rules and all the setting material. Then we are ready to start the commercial and art direction stuff required for the Kickstarter.

How long will that take? Well, see the employment stuff above: next year at the absolute earliest, and that's dependent upon scoring a lighter course-load for next year and a productive summer. What I can say is that the project will get done; I've progressed far enough and seen enough potential in Red Markets that failure is no longer an option.

Freelancing

The only real sad part of getting this new job is having to cut back on the work I take from other companies. I love working with people like Arc Dream and Posthuman Studios, and I was originally planning to use GenCon to increase the stable of clients in my freelancer files. I'm having trouble enough finding times to meet current commitments though. I'll be taking jobs as they come from my current collaborators, but I'm going to hold off on working in any more systems until I get Red Markets done.

Everything Else

I hit up GenCon this year and it was the best ever...just like every other year. I also got some great testing done at Springfield GAME this year. In general, I'm looking to increase my convention presence this summer and into next year, perhaps producing an ashcan draft of Red Markets to sell at the IGDN booth and/or running the design gauntlet that is Metatopia.

I'm getting really into board and card games, making pie-in-the-sky plans to throw my hat in that arena after Red Markets.

I'm still on the twitterz at HebanonGCal. I mainly talk about game design stuff, so give me a follow without fear of hearing about what I ate that day.

RPPR is great as always. I don't get to play nearly as much as I used to, but I'm trying to get in on a game with the guys at least once a week still. GDW with Ross is stimulating as always, and I often ponder doing another, two-folks-talking podcast in the traditional format, but I can't decide on a topic.

Anyway, that's anything and everything. Thank you for continuing to follow Hebanon Games. We'll keep you posted as we can, and I hope y'all are still around when we have something to show for all your time and devotion.

Kickstarter: No Soul Left Behind

If Hebanon Games has been quiet for awhile, it's because I've been on an employment rollercoaster for the last six months. I've got a new teaching contract for this upcoming year, so after some initial adjustment time, things should be returning to the same production schedule that got No Security out the door. Maybe next up will be Red Markets, or maybe I'll pick another freelancing job at GenCon, but I should be financially stable enough to begin creating with some regularity soon.

I'm eternally grateful to the RPG companies that shoved some work my way during these rough times. Posthuman, as always, is great to work with. The main brunt of my writing force has gone behind a project for Arc Dream called No Soul Left Behind.

NSLB is the first campaign and sourcebook for Greg Stolze's Better Angels. The system setting is a world where supervillains get their power from being possessed by demons. In order to appease the little bastards, players have to perpetrate acts of evil. Go TOO evil, and your soul gets dragged to hell. But if you do acts of meaningless, hollow villainy -- like carving your name in the moon or ransoming a monument -- you keep the demon in check and get to enjoy your superpowers a bit longer by wallowing in the moral grey area.

No Soul Left Behind takes this premise and moves it into an inner-city charter high school. Not only do the players have to figure out the mystery of their powers, they have to appease their hellspawn while trying to keep their struggling community alive. It's my 200+ page magnum opus on educational policy reform, moral conundrums, and absurd social satire.

You can listen to AP's of the whole campaign over at my ever-loyal partner RPPR. The book is crowd-funding on Kickstarter currently, and I'd really appreciate any support the fans of Hebanon could provide. In addition to, you know, helping the thing actually exist and enabling me to get paid, I think the book is easily the best thing I've ever written. It's a campaign quite unlike any other and works with a great game system everyone should try. I'd really love to see it get out into the world and find an audience, so any help y'all could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time. Expect my report from GenCon soon!

Game Chef 2014

Ross Payton and I decided to participate in Game Chef 2014. You can find the theme and ingredients at the link. We've got one week to make this a game! Here's what we came up with.

We camp up with an idea using Absorb + Sickle + Wild. Right now we are just titling the game after the theme: “There is no book.”

The basic idea is that a supernatural creature has entered your home. It can take any form, but it likes to disguise itself as common objects. In most homes, that means the best camouflage is books, DVDs, or something similar (There is no book). It absorbs the traits around it and hides until it is time to strike. The goal is to find and destroy the specific object the creature is masquerading as before it can absorb the traits of the players, kill them, and run amok in the world. But every question and false guess the players make gives the creature more ammo to imitate them and escape.

Mechanically, it’s ISpy and twenty questions with a supernatural horror twist. The goal is that it will be good for pick-up-and-play in almost any home.

In the first round, the GM defines the play area and puts  glyphs (symbols representing ingredients of the contest) on random items in the play area. For instance, if using a bookshelf and 3 players, the GM would slap 3 post-it notes on 3 random books.

Then the players get to “code” the magic spell to look for certain traits. So the player with the corresponding sickle glyph might put his on a book with the same color cover and say, “One of the defining traits is color”. The person with the star glyph might put theirs on a book by the same author as the one with a star already on it and say, “one of the defining traits is author.”

Once that’s done, the GM asks the players to close their eyes or turn away. He decides which of the items is actually the creature. Then everyone gets 3 tokens and can begin the game.

Players can spend tokens to do one of two things. The first option is to eliminate options based on a trait. So the player established genre as a trait, she might say, “So me a book that isn’t the right genre.” The GM then turns a horror novel the wrong way on the shelf. If someone else asks the same thing later, the GM can’t pick another horror novel, but they can eliminate a romance novel or something else the creature isn’t hiding as.

The other thing a token buys is that it can let the player ask a yes/ no question based on the established traits. “Is the book part of a series?” wouldn’t work unless the trait had been established with the glyphs, but “Does the book have a black cover?” would be fine considering previous examples.

Players can ask clarifying questions for free. Things like “would you call this a horror novel” or “what color would you call this book’s cover.”

The horror aspect comes in because the book can spend tokens back. The book can turn over a choice that’s been eliminated by giving a token back to the person that asked. The book can make any notes a character takes go missing, forcing the player to rely on memory. Lastly, we’re going to write a list of questions the creature can ask back to the players as the hunt goes on: does it bleed? Can it feel pain? Is it afraid? Etc. The GM roleplays this and keeps the pressure up as the game goes on. It also provides the ability to work the game into other RPGs by making it a sort of mini-LARP where the spell’s side-effect means characters have to answer yes/no questions truthfully, just as the creature is forced to do.

Finally, when all the tokens have been spent, each member of the group has one guess each. They put their elder sign glyph on the object they think is the creature. If someone gets it right, they win. If nobody guesses it, they lose.

We’re also thinking about adding a time limit to each section and maybe a third stage of the game akin to werewolf/mafia where the object has already pulled a “Thing” on one of the PCs and it becomes a matter of stopping it before the creature picks off the rest of the group.

What do you guys think?

Eclipse Phase: The Devotees

Hebanon Games isn't dead, despite what this blog might otherwise indicate. I've been very busy doing some freelancing work, trying to find a new day job, and picking away at Red Markets over the past few months. One of the results of all that quite time on the blog is The Devotees, the latest scenario from Eclipse Phase. The guys over at Posthuman Studios were nice enough to let me write for them based on the strength of the Know Evil campaign over at RPPR, and they were nicer still when they allowed me to turn in a draft nearly two times longer than what they wanted :-P. It went out to KS backers a few weeks ago, but the print and PDF bundle is now available. That's 27 glossy color pages and a mini-campaign's worth of gaming for $10!

The Devotees deals with the shadier side of Firewall as agents are tasked with investigating an X-threat on Legba, the heart of the ego trafficking syndicate Nine Lives. It makes for two-to-three nights of gaming full of transhuman espionage, voodoo, and existential horror. Give it a read and let me know what you think in the comments. Better yet, write a review for DTRPG!

Hopefully, I'll have more to post soon about the fruits of my long blogging absence. Thanks for following us here at Hebanon and stay tuned.