Good news everyone! My games are now available through both Lulu and Drivethrurpg. You can check out my Drivethrurpg profile right here.
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Good news everyone! My games are now available through both Lulu and Drivethrurpg. You can check out my Drivethrurpg profile right here.
I was taking a look at my publishing/sales history. Tim thought some people might find the numbers interesting.
Most of my physical book sales have been made in person. I’ve sold 34 copies of Awesome Adventures and 10 of Escape through Lulu, but many more in person, particularly at Gencon 2009. (Hell, I sold 3 of Escape to friends at Gencon 2010).
PDF sales are much higher: 110 of Awesome Adventures, and 26 of Escape. In both cases I make more from a print sale, but I’ve made more total money from PDF sales. I hope these sales will increase- both my games will be going live soon through Drive Thru RPG.
Total, I’ve made just shy of $1000 through internet sales. My physical sales records are a bit spottier, but the total profit is probably similar (more money per book, but no PDF sales).
Not bad for a business with minimal start up costs!
Just found this post about the Indie RPG Awards. Wish I had stumbled onto it earlier so I could participate in a more timely fashion.
And you know what, I pretty much agree: Awesome Adventures is not Award quality material. I didn’t nominate it for the award, and I don’t know who did. I wrote it for two reasons 1) I wasn’t 100% satisfied with SotC as written, and 2) I wanted to get experience as a game writer and designer.
And it’s also true that large sections of the text are taken wholesale from the SotC SRD, or simply restated in my own words, which is a decision, a year and a half later, I regret- well, regret is a strong way of saying it, but if I wrote it today, I present it quite a bit differently.
But it’s not fair to say Awesome Adventures has 85% of the test of SotC. It’s not even 85% of the size of SotC, which I think is a feature, not a bug. Awesome Adventures is a mean, lean, tight book, with the best parts of the FATE system, and everything else stripped out. And yes, it’s completely derivative.
.
Saturday morning Tim and I got up bright and early, packed up the car, and headed out to Oshcon. We took a wrong turn early on the highway, taking highway 26 a touch too early, driving through a podunk town, then resuming 26 towards Oshkosh. Once we got to town, we easily found the campus and our destination.
Tim and I checked into our dorm room- cheap but meager. Next year I need to remember to bring my own pillow. We came down and checked out the play space. The event organizers had us in the main room for visibility reasons, which is mostly board and card games, but let us move to the rpg room. (I think this was a key decision.) There were many sessions of board & card games, a few local gaming & hobby retailers, and a dedicated rpg room with a number of sessions scheduled. However, it seemed that at least half of the scheduled sessions did not occur. Adam, one of the organizers mentioned that con attendance was way up from last year, and the number of events had also increased.
Tim and I had reserved two tables for the whole con for Games on Demand. Two years ago, we had run it informally along with Daniel, and had a blast- that was probably my awesomest con experience to date. Last year was a little less exuberant.
Tim and I started up playing Race for the Galaxy between us, trying some variants, scoping out the place, and trying to rope people into games. I was worried no one was going to join us. But eventually, we found two brave souls willing to play Zombie Cinema.
Zombie Cinema
We quickly hit a cool setting- a Rob Zombie concert. Tim and I played single women looking for a good time, me trying to keep his character in check. The other characters were a 10 year old kid and his neighbor/chaperone. Zombies in the mosh pit! Everyone died trying to get to my character’s bunker. Good times.
Awesome Adventures
Sometime after lunch, we had three people come to our table, specifically looking for us, and to play Awesome Adventures. Sweet- my fliers were working, and people wanted to play my game. I chatted with them a bit- two were mostly into D&D, but the girl with them didn’t really roleplay. We tried to get into some character creation, and started with a Futurama inspired setting, where we had a cowardly military leader, a robot with an inferiority complex, Norman Rockwell’s head attached to a robot… and a crazy cat lady from the non-roleplayer. I tried very hard to get her to engage with the game further than that, to bring the awesome (I had some suggestions- maybe the crazy cat lady was the one who owned the spaceship everyone would be traveling on, and everyone else would have to deal with the cats- that seemed kind of cool), but she wasn’t really willing, or able to take it any further.
Having run Awesome Adventurers before for non-participants and having hated it, I couldn’t bring myself to take it any further. However, I talked briefly with the players, and was able to steer them towards Sign in Stranger.
Sign in Stranger
We set up our characters, wrote a pile of random words, and created three planets. Our cast of characters ended up colonizing a planet with sentient rainbows, working as potato farmers in a forced labor camp with the possible threat of summary execution hanging over our heads. Good times. Many laughs from the random word draws and the investigation rolls. I think playing this game instead of Awesome Adventures was a good call- it allowed the new player to collaborate, but not have to do so excessively.
Interestingly, Tim mentioned to me that she asked the rest of the table (while I was out of the room) “this is fun, but how do we win?” indicating to Tim that she had really no idea what all this was. We were both under the impression that she roleplayed, but didn’t Storygame.
Then dinner at the Thai place. Then In a Wicked Age
I asked Tim to run In a Wicked Age for me, and we got three more players, one from the Sign in Stranger game earlier, and two more from the con. I’m glad I did, because this is one of the best IAWA games I’ve played. The Oracle was a Nest of Vipers. Our characters were a Conjurer of Demons and Spirits, one of his Demons, seeking freedom and political influence, a Jaded Gladiator, and the Mistress of the Arena (my character). NPCs included a Rival Gladiator, another Demon, the Ruler of the City, and the Tax Collector.
What made this really interesting was that there were basically two teams of players, both with a master/servant relationship (Conjurer/Demon, Mistress/Gladiator), with tension between the characters within the team, and tension between the teams, but the main conflicts were directed at the NPCs. There was a complex web of shifting allegiances. When the dust settled, the Conjurer had strengthened his hold over his demons, the Gladiator had killed his rival and earned his freedom, and the Mistress of the Arena had completely dominated city politics and gotten the Conjurer to agree to serve her for five years. I pretty much got everything I wanted through sheer chutzpah and playing everyone else off each other. Everyone had a great time.
After that, the con rooms were closed. We went upstairs. Tim had bought 2 packs of the Giants minis (the ones with huges) and we pulled the Elder Red Dragon. Sweet! Then we went to the 10th floor lounge for a few after hours games. Tim went to bed fairly early. After hours games included:
ACTION CASTLE (Some people in the room loved it. Others hated it. The endgame is a little wonky, but it’s certainly fun. And they won, without even having to use a save or reload. ACTION CASTLE! I’m inspired to write my own Parsely game.)
Race for the Galaxy. I won twice. By large margins.
Jungle Speed. I almost felt dirty playing this. With new people it’s really not a challenge- I need Tim or someone to keep me reasonably in check.
Boomtown. Not my game. It’s an auctioning and dice-rolling game with mines. I had played it before. There’s a bit too much of a screw over mechanic to some of the cards, which is too bad- the core mechanic is very strong and interesting as-is.
The Great Dalmuti. We played the heck out of this game in High School. I was damn good then. I spent pretty much all but two rounds in the Great Dalmuti’s chair.
By that point, I was getting tired, and turned in.
Sunday Tim got us up far, far too early. We could have slept another hour, and still have been early for the events. We got smoothies and bagels. Mine was a chocolate chip bagel with chocolate chip cream cheese. I was recovering from a cold, but sadly, the cold weather had aggravated it quite a bit.
While waiting for the doors to unlock, Tim and I got our room checked out, and then played some Dominion. Dominion is one of the few games Tim regularly beats me at. I buy too many actions- they’re the fun part for me! But it’s money that wins games. We had a game with the Thief and the Secret Chamber in the game, and no 3-cost actions. I bought several Thieves, since there was a lot of silver buying. However, the Secret Chamber trounces the Thief most severely. My Thieves never stole a single treasure from Tim, quite the opposite, they let him tinker with his deck most effectively.
Around 10 they unlocked the doors, and let us in. We may have played a game of Race or two. At some point, I noticed non-gaming gamers in the room, sitting at a table waiting for a non-existent game to start. I invited them over to play Zombie Cinema with us.
Zombie Cinema
So, a short aside about these guys. They’re local students at UW-Oshkosh. Big into online roleplaying. Had played D&D (3rd edition) for what may have been the first time at the next table over the day before. One of them was on the couch a few feet away from me and made many snide comments during ACTION CASTLE. I’ll call him Tuff Guy. Tuff Guy and Buddy game together. They seemed to have a dynamic where Tuff Guy picks on Buddy and Buddy takes it. Tuff Guy was really into badass posturing. Buddy seemed to like to play wacky crazy guys. You know the drill. We also had the guy who played the Gladiator in IAWA with us- originally we were just chatting about games, I think.
Zombie Cinema
Anyway, our setting was Vegas, specifically a casino. I played Bruce, a Weak-Willed Macho, who was all fluster and tough-guy attitude, who quickly folded when presented with any actual human adversity (but was only too happy to fist-fight zombies.) We had a hooker, a mortician with a gambling addiction (played by Tim), the schizophrenic casino doctor (played by Buddy), and a weapon-fetishist paranoid casino-owner, played by Tuff Guy. Early scenes tended to involve the gambler and the hooker trying to get money out of Bruce, the doctor roleplaying how nutty he was, and the manager roleplaying how into guns he was. I guess it’s a legitimate way to use your scenes in Zombie Cinema, but it seems excessive. Pretty much everyone ends up in the manager’s office, where he continues to fetishize his character’s weapon collection- folding gun tables set into the walls. He offers my character a katana, and I refuse- “my Granddaddy didn’t die at Guadalcanal just so I could fight zombies with some Jap shit!” Ends up trying to offer me a grenade. (Who knows what he’s getting at.) Eventually the survivors scatter. Everyone dies. Bruce jumps on a grenade. Just like his Granddaddy.
3:16
We chat a bit about games. Tim suggests 3:16 for these guys- of course! Tim plays his experienced character- Sgt. Guido. Guido’s a badass. Like really badass. He started the session at FA 10, NFA 5. He’s almost plateaued for his advancement. Tim was worried he would overshadow the other characters, but in practice, it wasn’t an issue. Other guys made characters: Tuff Guy was Cpl. Shatter (which I gave him based on his NFA, rather than FA, since the Sgt slot was already taken), Buddy was Trp. Salty (actually named something else, but very close to Salty, and Salty stuck), and the guy who had been playing with us since SIS played Trp. Shitstorm. I love a good nickname like that.
Planet was an asteroid belt involving Shadow Beasts, tenebral creatures made of shadow. Alien Ability was Reduced Visibility- no damage at Far Range. As written, this says no side does damage at Far, but I somehow missed that- I had my Aliens doing damage at Far. However, the squad emerged quite victorious.
Narratively, Trp. Salty took the brunt of the damage, with the Black Dog/Hound of Tindalos-like Shadow Beasts frequently using him as a chew toy. After landing and digging in, the squad got a distress call from (sometimes PC) Lt. Brillo. Guido sighed, and led his squad to save Brillo, and then they took out an alien structure of some sort.
Next lunch. We had it at a nice Asian place with very good Crab Rangoon. (I order that everywhere I go. This place may have had the best Crab Rangoon I’ve ever tasted), and chatted with Gladiator/Shitstorm’s player.
3:16, Part II
For this, we had all our players from Part I, and three more, one who had played with us last year, though one dropped early in because he had to be somewhere else. Our fifth character was a clever NFA oriented guy, who saw every situation as an opportunity to use NFA, and he usually succeeded. I loved having this guy in the game.
So, what I like to do for 3:16 games is run them in batches of two planets- one pretty straightforward kill-the-aliens possibly-meatgrinder planet, and a more nuanced planet with more squad politics and emphasis on the NFA objectives. I did a couple of things for that.
One, my aliens were Corrupt Troopers. Theta Troop (the book calls them Companies, but I use the term Troop) had gone rogue, and settled on a planet and Beta Troop was sending in a small squad of badasses to deal with them. Mission objectives included taking the leader, Major Jung, alive. The Troopers had the ability of Armor which they used to good effect- the first round of every single combat, I failed, and every PC succeeded on their checks, so of course I used my Armor. Also, the players were keen to loot the bodies- I allowed them a NFA roll to either patch (recover) their armor OR gain a 1-round worth of usage for one of the weapons on the sheet. (Limited ammo packs, etc.)
So Major Jung decides that the 3:16 is being sent to worlds that pose no real current threat to Earth, pretty much just so the Xenotechnological arm of the Brigade (Xenos Troop) can do weapons research. So after one too many hell worlds and one too many worlds of slaughtering civilians, they give up the ghost and dig out a bunker somewhere under the desert.
While Lt. Guido is piecing this together and deciding what to do about it, I introduce another NPC-related arc: Trooper Johnson.
See, Tuff Guy had been accusing lots of things of being gay: Captain Perlman, their mission briefing officer, Cpl. Salty, and pretty much anything he the player didn’t like. So I wanted to see what he’d do confronted with an honest to goodness gay NPC.
Trooper Johnson was a fresh recruit. He was intelligent and well-trained, but a little naïve. He was also gay. Not flamingly gay or anything, but gay. He had a bit of a crush on his CO, Cpl Shatter (Tuff Guy’s character.) During Pod-Drop, Trp Johnson is awfully friendly, and idealistic. Trp. Shitstorm bets he won’t last. The pod is shot down. To everyone’s surprise, Johnson does not die in the crash. Cpl. Shatter pretends to be dead as a gag against the new guy, and Johnson shouts out “No! I never got to tell you-” but Shatter startles him before I can finish.
Later, Johnson is awfully helpful towards another trooper during weapons inspection. And that’s when Tuff Guy says “wait a minute, is he gay?”
There wasn’t another “that’s so gay” type remark from the player for the rest of the session.
Cpl. Shatter did pull off his fake-death trick again, and Johnson did get to tell him he loved him. Guido got to say “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Trooper.” Guido did take Jung captive after a faked surrender/prisoner-exchange, though Jung tried to get him to tell the brass they were all dead. Trp. Johnson piloted their Drop Ship during the final fight to get back into orbit, and earned a medal. Good times.
I convinced the local game store owner to give us a good deal on bulk D&D minis. He also bought four of my books (2 Awesome Adventures, 2 Escape from Tentacle City) in exchange for store credit. We went to his store, went through a big box of minis (which we got a % off on the list price), and spent an additional $80 on some out-of-print sealed boxes. Tons of minis. We’re going to need a bigger boat.
Here’s a short e-mail mini review I received of Awesome Adventures:
Having read through the book, I would like to offer a little feedback as well.
Pro:
While some complain about nothing new being added to the FATE system, I do not see that as a bad thing personally. If something is not broken, then there is little reason to fix it.
Some things have been nicely simplified. While stunts may be a nice touch in Spirit Of The Century, they did not seem all that necessary when I was reading through that game, and their removal for Awesome Adventures was a handy step in streamlining it.
Also, by making it a multi-genre game, it really makes one look at the game as more than just Pulp; making it well suited to those who want to play it in another genre. You did a good job in that regard. I really do feel I can just tweak a few things here and there for one of my favorite game settings (or even a generic setting of my own.) I could easily see Awesome Adventures as the new SRD for the third edition of FATE.
Con:
Only one in my opinion. Character creation does tie a tad too closely to Spirit of the Century in that it automatically assumes prior adventures. While that is fine for Spirit, where everyone is part of the same club and probably gets in not only through Accident of Birth-date but also through possible recommendation (at least I can assume that), plenty of awesome characters began their sagas with no experience, and some players will want to play with inexperienced characters. In super heroes games, for example, I like playing the newbie.
Despite spending a lot of time on this con, I do not think it to be a huge problem. Phases can be reinterpreted. To use my superhero example: Phase one could be unchanged, Phase two could be Origin, and Phases three through Five could be any defining event: Problem solved. Newbies in other genres? Phases two through four could be past experiences and Five be where motivation is defined. Again, Problem solved.
Last Word:
Awesome Adventures is a good game, and it shows how awesome FATE can be. All in all, Good Job.
Thanks for reading this and taking in my feedback.
Signed,
Adam Leisemann
…and they are good! Ready to roll out for the con. Awesome Adventures has a few small strips of white along some page edges, but Escape is just fine, which is more important, since the border art goes all the way to the edge of the page and is an important part of the look of the game.
Wooo!
Today Brendan hosted a day of massive gaming at his house. I think this might be the first day of just gaming for the sake of gaming (not con related) in a long long time. I used to do that sort of thing all the time in High School, but not so much anymore. Good times. We got together around 1 PM, played many many games of Race for the Galaxy, a playtest of Rocket Rummy Race, Brendan ran Awesome Adventures, more games of Race for the Galaxy were played, and then a playtest of the setup and character creation for War for the Throne, and broke around 9 PM.
I posted AP reports about the Awesome Adventures game on Grumbling Dwarf and Rpg.net, in addition to a couple of other places.
The War for the Throne playtest was quite a bit of fun. The guys came up with a Norse/Beowulf type setting, with druids, raiding fleets, and three sons- a mad druid reformer, a driven angst-filled warrior raider, and a learned scholar. We had a pretty good conversation about the themes and essential assumptions of the game- I have some very concrete ideas about what play is supposed to be like, and the GM advice really needs to support that. I think everyone left with a better idea of what the game is supposed to be, and very eager to playtesting this. I’m looking forward to starting it up- probably sometime after Gencon.
Here’s some stuff I did at Forge Midwest this last weekend.
Friday: Tim and I arrived at the hotel before anyone else. We played Fury of Dracula 2 player- it was Tim’s first time, and probably the weakest game of Fury I’d ever played. Tim wasn’t really into it. Dave the Deranged showed up during this. I think after that we played Jungle Speed. There was lots of Jungle Speed at the con.
Dave had his Nerf guns and there was lots of screwing around with Nerf guns and pretending to be zombies. (This too, would happen a lot at the con, culminating in one of the two rooms being designated as a no-nerf gun area, and us telling the hotel desk guy that if he heard zombies it was just us. Which is the exact wrong advice to give in case a zombie apocalypse were to happen.)
More locals showed up, Ron Edwards showed up, and Jae and Amanda from far away (Michigan?) showed up. We split up for two games- I ‘ran’ Escape from Tentacle City for Ron, Jae, Abrahm, and Jerry. At the other table, Len ran Ghost/Echo or whatever it’s called for Tim, Amanda, and Dave.
Escape was horribly awesome, as always. Survivor groups included midgets, a Mexican street gang, high school dropouts, 3rd graders, and an Islamic Terrorist cell. Horrible guilt ensued. The system is really humming along- I think I need to just adjust a few phrasings. The core rules just plain work, but need some tweaking. Ron suggested lowering the available Stress lslightly (to 2/3 from 3/4), and I think he’s spot on.
It’s Complicated got some play. I played with Len, Tim, Ron, Jerry, and Abram. I’m not sure what else got played. Ron was very passionate about getting to try It’s Complicated, and it was a pretty successful session, despite bumbling through the rules a little bit.
Saturday had quite a few playtests- I tested Ron’s new game about the Lebanon Civil War, which is like Spione, but with twice as complicated card play, and with a twice as depressing setting. I’ve played more upbeat sessions of Grey Ranks. I was fricking tired, and the setting didn’t terribly engage me. But it was a dirty mechanics playtest.
As a nice upbeat capstone to Witness (I don’t recall the Arabic word, but that’s what it translates to), we played a nice game of MAID, with Ron, Amanda, Juli, and late joiners Abram and local gamer girl Sam. Anime madness ensued, with an incompetent supervillain master (young Dr. Doom, sort of), meddling spy maids, wacky catgirl maids, a cyborg ghost maid, and a almost mostly normal maid. A poorly-controlled summoned demon, a random-event spawning copy of the Necronomicon, and a shrinking potion made sure that the insanity didn’t stop.
After that, I playtested Tim Koppang’s new 1-on-1 player game, Mars Colony, where you play a city planner in over your head at the problem-ridden Mars Colony. It was amazing fun, with a solid mechanical ground, cutting political satire, and Tim running it really sold it. I had a blast as Maggie Yang, who bludgeoned all her problems with hard work, positive thinking, and Maoist ideology, and solved the crime and sewage problems of Mars Colony, even if she had to completely destroy human rights and freedoms in order to do it.
I ran a short demo of Awesome Adventures for the Walking Eye podcaster Kevin, and then did a short interview with him. Expect to see that one coming soon!
Somewhere in here were games of Race for the Galaxy, more Jungle Speed, exciting monologues with Ron Edwards (more entertaining Saturday night when the peanut gallery was a little tired and drunk, resulting in Ron responding with “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” to a player lovingly describing her centaur wizard with the Fly spell) waiting for other games to wrap up so new games to start, and fighting with nerf guns during said waits, and sending Tim for food and caffiene.
Sunday many of the people who were there just wanted to hang out and chat since they were so wiped, and people with longer drives headed out. It’s too bad more people didn’t game- we had like 6 going on Saturday, and only 1 game at a time on Sunday. I ran a short game of Poison’d- the arc was a little rushed due to time constraints, but there was a MacGuffin map, backstabbing, pirate brutality, and the surgeon “failing” to save another mortally wounded pirate PC. At the end, the greedy quartermaster sold out the Dagger to the captain of the Resolute.
Then we played My Life With Master, with the local crew (and Dave). This was less of a hit- the Master was the Dragon, and the minions were low-level D&D monsters. I had trouble setting the right mood- I think Len figured it out halfway through the game that maybe you don’t actually want to be a minion- before that, he was enjoying just playing the stupid orc. But the game got too saddled down in parody of D&D tropes (I was a worse offender than anyone else, with my portrayal of the Outsiders, who were a party of adventurers the dragon wanted to scare and impress). and the game marched right into humor territory, which was fun, but is not where My Life With Master is supposed to live. We cut endgame short (completely ignoring the whole rolls against the master once refusing a request finally happened), since really, we were all tired, and those rolls would have taken a long fricking time. The kobold resolutely realized burning down all the fields would hurt the nice blind baker lady who thought he was just an orphan boy, and then the adventurers came in and killed everyone, except the goblin, who attached himself to the watchmaker, a budding mad-scientist Master.
Edit: I completely forgot about Friday’s game of shock between me, Tim, and Dave, which featured a robot uprising against more advanced robots, a female robot with male gender identity, and a human ambassador with alien gender identity.
Also forgot about Saturday morning’s Prime Time Adventures game, produced by Robert Bohl, with me, Sabe, Len, Jen, and Jerry, which was probably the first PTA game I had played that didn’t suck. Interesting game, but I really think it doesn’t work that great for one-shots.
Recently, I did a search for posts about Awesome Adventures, which is a pain in the butt for a number of reasons, number one being it’s a really common turn of phrase.
Anyway, I can’t find a single review or actual-play report, except for those that I wrote. This is a problem.
If you’ve read, enjoyed, and played Awesome Adventures, I need you! Write up a review, or even just a short actual-play report, and you’ll have my gratitude.
First, an apology- I was really fricking tired last weekend, so if I seemed irritated with you, it’s probably not your fault. Unless you were being really irritating.
This isn’t going to read like most of my con reports, since of said tiredness, and as I felt a bit like a hostess and saleswoman, I percieved the event slightly differently than I have past events.
Anyway, Forge Midwest was held right here in Madison. I used my industry contacts to get us cheap prices at the Best Western- so cheap in fact, Ron Edwards and Matt Snyder paid for the meeting rooms, making the convention absolutely free to attendees! How’s that for a deal? Everyone is already talking about holding it here next year which is fantastic.
Friday, Tim and I got at the hotel pretty early- noon, and were some of the first people there. I think some sort of boardgame was played, then Blood and Bronze, which I found rather unsatisfying.
I’m going to talk about Blood and Bronze here for a moment- I really like Gamism, and this is Gamism, but it doesn’t seem to be a kind of Gamism I enjoy. I don’t know if it’s the negotiation-based gameplay, or if it’s a problem with the rules. I’d rather just boast all the time and not engage with the wargame underneath. I may go into more depth into this another time.
I ran Awesome Adventures that day, which was a decent game about cthonic wuxia. Best moment- the cyborg flying vampire enemy is charmed into switching sides.
I finally played Trollbabe for the first time, which I posted about over on the Forge. It was a good’un.
I played Emily Care Boss’s Sign in Stranger, a hillarious game which uses random words for creating setting descriptions. It’s still in playtest, and I’m hoping to get a copy of it.
Also tried Jeepform, which is an interesting Scandinavian form of gaming that is a reaction to LARP, in the same way that indie/story games are a reaction to ‘traditional’ rpgs. It used tighly framed scenes, and nothing I could identify as a resolution mechanic, to tell a very interesting story. It was certainly a game, and an enjoyable experience, but one I’m still wrapping my head around.
Sunday, I got to run Mountain Witch, which was fun, though six players is quite a bit in a one-shot, and I felt up the mountain took too long, and I didn’t have enough time for the keep itself and the really meaty bits of the game, having to cut out the final rising tension arc. I should have had tighter chapter requirements early on. This game notably had no other Roleplaying Revolutionaries in it, (I didn’t drive all the way to the East side of Madison just to play games with people I play games with every week in the Central part of Madison!), but it did include fellow Madisonian Daniel, who I have not gamed with in some time, and Swede and Jeepplayer Tobias, who enjoyed it but also needed time to wrap his head around it.
Afterwards, Tobias, myself, and Mike Holmes had an orginially interesting and then increasingly frustrating conversation about gaming, roleplaying, GNS, and other things, which I decided to cut my losses and drop out of. Which was good, because I got to playtest William Hessian’s Riot card game, which shows early promise, and helped him with some roadblocks he was having.
The downside, is that I didn’t sell as many copies of Awesome Adventures as I had hoped. I still made sales, but I was gunning for just a few more, and I feel that if I had been more in it during the AA game or if the selling was better organized and/or highlighted, I would have done better. Having that extra level of concern took time and energy away from what was really important, having fun and playing games.
That single negative note aside, it was a great weekend- great gaming, great people, great conversations, and great fun.
Willow Rants 