Plus some links to websites!?!
I’ve been on holiday in the sun. For the first time in many years I’ve actually relaxed. I feel for the first time since my daughter was born and maybe since the pandemic I actually got to clear my head.
I’ve spent some of this very offline time writing up game designs I’ve been thinking about for a while. Here’s a little tour of them.
THREE GAMES
The first is a cup-of-coffee driven solo game for Beyond Cataclysm’s ISBN COFFEE, which is still running right now – you can go back it here.
The game is a solo ‘idle game’ experience where forgetting about the game (in the same way you forget your coffee and let it go cold) is part of playing it. Create a character, set them off on adventure and record their attempting action or goal. And then – the next time you have a sip of your coffee – you check the oracle and various table to see how things went, before creating their next step. It’s ben interesting as there’s some ethical concerns around how you make someone drinking or not drinking coffee a success variable. You obviously don’t want to encourage people to chug away at their coffee or drink more than they need or want to. As such success can’t be ‘scold yourself with nuclear strength caffeine water’.
So far it plays well, and hopefully get to be a kind of consumptive DieDream once finished off.
(Bonus game: DieDream is a really excellent solo roleplaying game that you can play in your head as you fall asleep by Alfred Valley. In my case, it was on the flight. Falling in and out consciousness while resolving an adventure entirely of my own early-morning imagination was brilliant. I think there might be something really revolutionary within this system (which is simple enough to store in your head, and tricky enough to still feel like magic). Get it here.
The second game is an OSE solo procedure that riffs on the Dark Fort game which MORK BORG is based off. In Dark Fort, you would roll dice to see how many exits there are to the next room, and then do an encounter if relevant. It’s a very simple and satisfying crawl experience. A napkin’s worth of adventure. I’ve created a version of this for OSE which reference pages in the various books of the manuals for the game. With the procedure players will be exploring and mapping out a weird dungeon as they explore it. They’ll discover the denizens of each level as they descend and deal with encounters as if their party was being run by a real GM. It’s a simple system with loads of discovery in it, while staying as close to the vanilla OSE rules as possible. I’ve got an idea to print it at a size where it’s just a bit slimmer than the OSE books so that it can slip inside the front cover without poking out. Maybe this is how all solo modules should be? I’ll likely do a swift and low-target kickstarter for this just for the print run.
And the third game is something a bit bigger. I’m trying to create a journaling wargame where you’re writing reports/letters home/a diary between each mission. The idea is that your force is being deployed on these missions, but you’ll have to work out the end goal of your higher command. It’s also currently setting agonistic; that being decided by the player as they start journaling. In theory this means it can be a game about roman centurions, a fleet of spaceships, five kids getting revenge on their bullies over a summer, special ops nonsense, or fantasy. I realise that this is a dangerous place to be in terms of design – crunchy specificity (tm Tim Clare) is what makes stuff interesting – but as I hope to take this to a publisher I think the theme can be developed later if one is needed.
This game is, again, primarily solo, but can also be run as a two player game too. It all runs off a single card deck at the moment and does one of my favourite things in games, which is the ‘committed deck’ thing – as all aspects of the conflict consist of the same deck (except for troop/civilian/target locations which are of course little cubes) it means that there’s always cards that are out of the draw pool. Players will collect relics for permanent improvements to their forces and play cards out to form their battlefield – locking out those cards from being used during the battle itself. This is something that happens best in Oh My Goods! A card game that sees you use cards as the currency, the goods, the locations, and also a kind of shared resource pool. I’m trying to fold this idea into a campaign game (which actually exists for Oh my Goods! in the form of Expedition to Newdale). I’ve got the core systems sorted and it’s now a case of writing 52 relic effects and, you know, #content.
YOUR MISSION
I’ve just filled up a folio society notebook I was given by a colleague a couple of years ago. It was a freebie to them, they slung it at me across the pile of books that protected them from me. Thanks Duncan! It was a great notebook because it was able to lie flat.
Your mission is to recommend me a notebook that actually lies flat really nicely. Please reply to me here or just tweet me. I am CJEggett everywhere, even if its a place where there are no tweet.
ELSEWHERE
The Job. Possibly the first game by Andre at Games Omnivorous since 17th Century Minimalist? Looks like a banger.
MORK BORG, but it’s only D4s.
The Man Who Invented The Roll Under System (don’t fact check this) Chris McDowall has a new game. It’s beautiful and it’s got hexes. Chris is woefully far away from his target of £12 (don’t check this) so please back if you haven’t already.
Always trust your vibe check. That guy who acts weird? Probably weird.
My mate Sam has a book about the ultra cool rare disease she has. It might be the only book on the subject and contains first hand accounts. Get in on the ground floor.
Saw this game about being a hireling for a (now dead) hero around three seconds ago, looks cool. Its opening line is:
You were all hired by a big Hero, naïve and optimistic, to help explore a dark hole in the ground. “I just need you to hold my torch and carry my bags for me ” he said, “it will be fine”. Well, now the Hero is dead.
CLOSER TO HOME
I’ll put this on sale on Friday, if you don’t already have a copy. It’s the slug game again.
If you do have a copy of it in physical form only, then please reach out. I’ll send you the PDF for FREE.
2024 is the year of the WEBSITE. Please let me know about any websites you have enjoyed. I might list them here in the future.
I am on BlueSky, I am on Twitter, I am cutting and sticking my own print and play version of Rocky Mountain Man. I do all these things under the ‘handle’ CJEggett.
I’ve got a review or two in Tabletop Gaming coming up, and I’ve also got a really cool piece in Wyrd Science. Make sure you pick up the next couple of issues.
If you like this email, send it to a friend.
C J EGGETT | Writer & Game Designer 