Laser Kittens is live on Kickstarter!

Laser Kittens, a game of tiny kittens growing up and learning to control their lasers, is live on Kickstarter. In Laser Kittens, you'll play kittens being fostered at the Knoll St School for Wayward Kittens, a house where humans take in orphaned and abandoned kittens and take care of them until they're ready to find their Forever Homes. You'll learn important lessons from your adult cat professors, such as how to control your laser -- a special superpower that humans don't know about. Use your laser to summon a herd of emus to your aid, or teleport all of the catnip into the basement, or to erase a bad human from history.

Laser Kittens is a cooperative storytelling game suitable for everyone from pre-teens to adults. Using two standard decks of playing cards, you'll bid for control of the story. Players take turns being Class Captain, setting the scene and controlling any NPCs while the other players narrate the actions of their kittens. When your laser goes off, you never know if it will do something amazing or backfire terribly, creating kitten chaos. The fun is in seeing what happens!

When you back Laser Kittens you can get a PDF and audio versions of the rulebook, or a softcover physical copy (100 pages, 6x9 inches). At higher pledge levels, you can get your cat included as an NPC, or even have our artist (Cynthia Lee) incorporate your cat into the book's illustrations. Back Laser Kittens today!

Why -- or why not -- use the Apocalypse World system?

I love games that use the Apocalypse World system. At Metatopia I playtested a bunch of AW-bsed games, ranging from relatively straightforward transpositions of the mechanics into new scenarios, to wildly creative reimaginings of the system. It's my go-to system for a more traditional* game.

So when I design a game, it's worth asking why I am, or am not, using the AW system as my basis. The two games I brought to Metatopia make a good illustration of this, since one is AW and the other is not.

My AW game, tentatively titled "Get Ready to Rock," is about a band on tour. It was inspired in part by some sessions of the "Touring Rock Band" and "Touring Rock Band 2" Fiasco playsets -- so I know that you can tell the kind of stories I wanted to tell without AW mechanics. And my use of AW started in part simply from noticing the similarity between the name "Apocalypse World" and the name of the show "Metalocalypse" (another key inspiration). But the game has progressed and worked because the AW system does certain things that are useful for the kind of stories I want the game to produce.

First, one of the key drivers of the game is the tension between the cohesion necessary to play music together, versus the clash of egos that arises when a band hits the big time. This is supported in part by some of the base AW mechanics. The use of differentiated playbooks geared to different roles in the story helps to model both the complementary differences that make a band work (made obvious in the formulas used by music executives constructing boy bands and supergroups), as well as the different directions that each member's personality will tug the band in. I also borrowed the "strings" mechanic pretty directly from Monsterhearts (which I regard as the paradigm of an AW game, perhaps even more so than AW itself) as a way of intensifying the need to make complicated choices that implicate your fellow band members. I also implemented one innovation which followed smoothly from the AW base: the band as an entity has its own playbook, separate from the players' individual ones, with its own set of stats, its own harm track, and moves that can only be done by the band as a whole.

Second, I wanted the game to motivate the characters to make bad decisions and get themselves into trouble. This is not a game where the GM dreams up a set of challenges that the players then work to overcome -- instead, the characters' own actions should get twisted to draw them further into complicated situations and force them to make difficult choices. The aforementioned strings are an obvious way to do this, and I enhance their role in the game to allow players to make things complicated for each other. But even more importantly, the "partial success" mechanic in AW leads directly to complications. Having clearly structured "moves" means that players are confronted with tough choices and a framework for complicating their own lives when they roll anything less than a 10.

On the other hand, I think there are good reasons that Laser Kittens is not an AW game. For this game I developed my own system, based on bidding cards from two standard poker decks. There are several aspects of the gameplay that I wanted, which would be difficult to model using an AW basis.

First, Laser Kittens is a game with a rotating GM. Now, I know there are GM-less AW games out there, so it's not an impossibility. But it doesn't follow easily, because there is a tension between the player-level decisions involved in bidding to GM a scene, versus the character-level actions of using your playbook's moves. Bidding for the GM role would have required a separate mechanic, whereas my original system was able to seamlessly merge the mechanics for picking a GM with the mechanics for resolving conflicts within a scene.

Second, I wanted to model the chaos of kitten life. While much emphasis is placed on the partial success mechanics of AW, ultimately characters in an AW-based game are more or less in control of what they're doing, within known parameters of probability. On the other hand, kittens are not in control -- they have limited knowledge and limited control over their own bodies. The card-bidding mechanic of Laser Kittens generates a good deal of chaos. (I had one playtester tell me that she had more fun when she selected her bid entirely at random, rather than trying to purposefully choose a good card.) Moreover, bidding from a fixed set of cards encourages players to deliberately invite failure by spending bad cards, both as a way of refreshing their hand and as a storytelling end in itself. This is something that can't be done with a dice-based system, where each roll is uncontrollable and statistically independent of each other roll.

Third, there are the lasers. I'm planning a longer post about how I developed the laser mechanic, so for the moment I'll suffice it to say that nothing in the standard AW toolkit allows for modeling some of the key characteristics of lasers in the game. Specifically, lasers (unlike character moves in an AW game) 1) build up "pressure" over time until they're forced to go off, and 2) have success/failure levels that can be progressively learned about, and adjusted, during the power-up period.

That being said, translating what Laser Kittens has become into an AW-based system is an interesting challenge, and a potential stretch goal for Kickstarter!

*I know some people regard AW games as super indie. But to me, "traditional" encompasses any game in which there is a distinction between GM and players, and in which each player controls a character whose abilities are defined by a set of "stats and powers."

Stentor's Origins Roundup

I'm back from a super-successful Origins and battling a bit of con crud. Here's a roundup of what I was up to:

Sales: We had Bunny Money Gunny for sale at the IGDN booth. I don't have the final numbers, but it was pretty clear that this game sells when Cheyenne is demoing it.

Purchases: I kept it light this year. I picked up The Quiet Year for my own enjoyment, and a copy of the Fate Accelerated book and a bunch of Fate dice for use in my Economic Geography class this fall.

Played: We'll start with the games I ran -- three sessions of Laser Kittens.

I've got extensive notes, and I'll try doing a longer writeup of each later. For now, I'll just give summaries.

Game 1: This session began with Professor Julius administering the Cat Oath to all of the kittens. They spent some time learning about the ethics of laser use, then had to face a midterm exam in which they were attacked by a mysterious black cat. Luckily, it turned out to be Professor Siren's doppelganger, as she had the "two two two" laser.

Game 2: The kittens dedicated themselves to getting human Joe in trouble. Since they couldn't get up the stairs to his room on their own, they summoned a herd of emus (using the "zoo zoo zoo" laser) and rode them. One kitten had a terrifying prophetic vision of a post-apocalyptic future if they killed Joe (using her "view view view" laser), and so another kitten decided to simply erase Joe from history as if he had never existed (using the "shoo shoo shoo" laser).

Game 3: The kittens were on a mission to attack the neighbors' dog. Concerned that the rabbits in the house were helping the humans to steal the kittens' poops (and thus their powers), the kittens invaded the rabbits' secret lair behind the paneling. A battle ensued, which ended in victory for the cats when all of the rabbits were teleported (using the "shoo shoo shoo" laser) into the neighbors' house, which got the dog in trouble as he was blamed for the sudden appearance of a bunch of bloodied rabbits.

Since there was so much interest in Laser Kittens, I never got to run the other game on my menu, Dread: Dinosaur Edition. You can grab the character questionnaires here if you'd like to try running it yourself.

The first game run by someone else that I played was Microscope. We created the story of the encounter and ensuing war between Earth and the Uktar, an insectoid alien species, told from the Uktar's point of view. We had political intrigue, the rise of an Uktar-worshipping cult, and the eventual development of Uktar-human hybrids.

Next, I played a game of The Warren. I've run this game before, but this was my first time as a player. Our game was set in ancient Egypt, and we had established our warren on a small island in the river to protect ourselves from the desert hares. However, the humans had built a dam to divert river water for irrigation, making it possible for the hares to invade. My character had to bait the River God (a giant crocodile) into attacking and smashing the dam in order to save the warren.

The last game I played was A Single Man in Possession of a Good Fortune, a hack of Kagematsu set in regency-era England. This is not a setting I would have chosen if my options weren't so limited by the time I got to the front of the line at Games on Demand, but it was incredibly fun. In our game, we were three daughters and their governess of the head British official in Bombay. We had to win over the new governor who had been sent to replace our ailing father so that he would protect the city against a French invasion.

GenCon GM report 3: Fiasco -- Science Comics

The third GenCon game was another round of Fiasco. This time we used Nick Wedig's Science Comics playset.

Not this one, the evil one.

Our characters were:

• Sir Captain Super Tight Pants, a superhero with the power to create clones of himself
• Sir Captain Super Tight Pants 3, one of SCSTP's clones
• Thuddy, the son of the evil Dr. Thunder who doesn't know who his mom is
• Tear Duct, one of Dr. Thunder's minions
• Static Cling, another of Dr. Thunder's minions, who SCSTP has declared his archnemesis (not realizing he's just a minion)

Our story begins as SCSTP-3 is driving his getaway van, having just stolen the Unobtainium that is necessary to power Dr. Thunder's weather control device. He is roaring down the highway through the Arizona desert outside the trailer park where Dr. Thunder has his lair, when he runs into construction and traffic grinds to a halt. This allows Thuddy, Tear Duct, and Static Cling to approach on mopeds. SCSTP-3 tries to escape through the sun roof, but Tear Duct's power of inducing weeping causes him to lose his footing and drop the Unobtainium into an irrigation ditch beside the highway.

SCSTP meets up with Static Cling at a cafe to brag about having defeated him, but Static Cling reveals to him that he has more Unobtainium.

Static Cling installs more Unobtainium in the weather control device. Dr. Thunder stops by to make sure the device will be operational for the church picnic on Sunday, as he wishes to make the weather mild and sunny.

Tear Duct worries that Dr. Thunder is going over to the side of Good. She sets the weather control device to make it rain on the church picnic.

Thuddy goes to the picnic, having been told by his dad that he would finally get to meet his mother there. But the picnic is rained out, so he doesn't get to meet her.

SCSTP-3 calls SCSTP from the traffic jam and swears that he has the Unobtainium. SCSTP concludes that Static Cling must have more Unobtainium, and therefore he needs to organize another mission to steal it. SCSTP-3 agrees to do so, as soon as he can get to a place to turn around on the highway.

SCSTP goes to meet Dr. Thunder at the picnic to accept his promised conversion to Good. But the rain, and the fact that Dr. Thunder isn't at the picnic after all (he's back in his lair trying to find the weather control device so he can fix it), convince him Dr. Thunder was lying about his conversion.

Static Cling attempts to fix the weather control device, but his static powers make it malfunction, causing snow. Tear Duct is happy about this, and puts on her heavy fur villain cloak that she's always wanted to be able to wear. SCSTP-3 spots Static Cling from the highway, and steals the weather control device from him. Thuddy sees SCSTP-3 running to his car with the device, and blames him for raining out the picnic.

Dr. Thunder assembles his minions to demand an explanation. He blames Tear Duct for the weather control device's malfunctions, and de-minionizes her.

Thuddy looks through his father's contacts and finds the phone number for one "Sally Lightning," who he suspects is is mother.

SCSTP-3 gets stuck in traffic again. He pulls up next to a police car, and the officer recognizes the helpfully labeled "Weather Control Device" in the passenger seat. The police don't buy the "costume party" excuse, and they lock SCSTP-3 up.

SCSTP assembles a team of clones to attack Static Cling's lair. Just as they are about to depart, they get a phone call from SCSTP-3 asking them to come to the jail to bail him out. So they head there instead.

Static Cling sneaks into the police station and steals the weather control device from the evidence room.

Tear Duct files an anonymous tip to the police, blaming SCSTP and his clones for the weather mayhem. The police arrest SCSTP and the clones as they arrive at the station.

Thuddy calls up his mother, who hangs up on him.

In the end, SCSTP-3 takes the blame for the weather problems and serves a long prison sentence. SCSTP gets off on the weather charges, but an ethics panel orders him to stop using his cloning powers. Static Cling is apprehended with the stolen weather control device and goes to jail as well. Tear Duct tries to build her own weather control device, but it goes wrong and causes a huge drought, which (since she's still wearing the fur cloak) causes her to die of heat stroke. Rejected by his mother, Thuddy sinks into a deep dispair and takes to watching anime gerbil porn to deal with his trauma.

GenCon GM report 2: Fiasco -- Touring Rock Band II

The second game I ran at Games on Demand for GenCon was Fiasco on Sunday afternoon. We used the Touring Rock Band II playset. Our characters were:

• Dennis "Grizzly" Bencham, a drummer who was forced out of his band due to a drug problem and wants to re-join now that he's been through rehab.
• Jörm Svenson, a failed rocker and Dennis's rehab buddy, who is helping him care for Vlad, the live grizzly bear that Dennis used to use in his stage shows.
• Alan Perkins, DDS, a veterinary dentist who has agreed to go in with Jörm on a scheme to market gold dental grills for large predators.
• Steven "The Spaceman" Stevenson, a much younger and much more talented drummer who was hired by the band to replace Dennis. He has a pet tiger, Tony, that he uses on stage.
• Jacky LeGrand, the dissolute heir to the LeGrand Records company who has just lost the contract with Steven's band.

Our story begins at Starbucks, where Dennis and Jacky both work to make ends meet. In between making coffees, Jacky is looking through a huge stack of paternity test results to find out how many more child support payments he'll need to make out of the dwindling LeGrand Records fortune. Steven comes in, and Jacky tries to convince him to bring his band back to LeGrand Records. Dennis overhears this and gets upset, as he had hoped Jacky could pull some strings and get him back into the band. Jacky reassures Dennis that they're still bros, and that he's coming to Dennis's big party on Friday.

Trying to sabotage his replacement's career, Dennis sneaks into Steven's mansion and feeds poisoned meat to Tony. Steven confronts him and chases him off, but not before Tony has gotten very sick.

Jörm pays a visit to Alan to discuss their business deal. The scheme is running low on funds, but Jörm is sure it's just about to pay off. Alan agrees to try to get some of his dentist friends to buy in so that they can afford more gold for test grills.

Steven meets up with Alan at Starbucks for a consultation about Tony's health. While there, Steven catches sight of one of the paternity tests with his name on it. Before he can read the whole thing, Alan and Dennis get into a confrontation over the fact that Dennis "stole" Alan's wife. The manager has to come out and ask everyone to leave.

Steven's curiosity is piqued by the paternity test, as his mother had always told him he was the result of a virgin birth. He goes to the clinic, and after paying a long string of fees, gets a copy of the test showing that Alan is his father.

Jacky realizes he's not going to be able to make all of these child support payments. He needs to get some cash fast. Browsing through Craigslist, he finds an ad for an investment opportunity in making gold dental grills for large predators. After exchanging a few emails with Jörm, who assures him he will see at least double his money before the 6th of the next month, Jacky PayPals him his last $65,000.

Dennis goes to Jörm to get some drugs to give to Jacky at the party, in order to get him high enough that he'll sign paperwork giving him a recording contract. In exchange for the drugs, Dennis agrees to kidnap Tony as a test subject, so that the grill business can expand from bears into big cats.

Jörm tells Alan that he has a test tiger lined up. Alan is excited, since as a result of his meeting with Steven he has already come up with the idea of doing grills for tigers too. Jörm gives Alan the $65,000 he got from Jacky, in exchange for horse tranquilizers that Dennis can use on Tony and Jacky.

Alan returns to Starbucks to get more info on Dennis, now that he knows where the man who stole his wife works. Dennis refuses to serve him, so Jacky takes the order, and Alan gives his name as "Alan Perkins, DDS." The name sounds familiar, and Jacky matches it to one of the names on the paternity tests. When he gives Alan his drink, he also slips him a copy of the paternity test showing he's Steven's father.

Steven brings Tony to Alan's clinic, where Jörm uses Vlad to demonstrate the grill concept. But Alan and Steven are distracted as they realize that they have both seen the paternity test results. Steven calls his mother to confirm it, but she denies having slept with Alan.

Jacky goes to Dennis's party, where he finds that the only other person there is Jörm. They get to talking, and Jacky mentions this great investment opportunity in large predator grills that he found on Craigslist. Unaware of how Scandinavian names are pronounced, he doesn't connect the "Jörm" he was emailing with to the "Yorm" he's talking to now, so they both conclude that there is a competitor out there -- Jörm assumes it's Alan, trying to cut him out of the profits. Dennis gives Jacky a drink spiked with horse tranquilizers, but he overdid it, and Jacky passes out before he can sign the contract.

Dennis successfully kidnaps Tony, and brings a sedated Tony and Jacky to meet Jörm and Alan at the clinic. Jörm accuses Alan of going behind his back to start his own grill business. Dennis gets into a confrontation when he realizes that the dentist in this scheme is the guy who has been accusing him of stealing his wife, and he drives off with Tony and Jacky (as well as an un-sedated Vlad).

Jörm and Alan agree to try to ambush Dennis when he arrives at Steven's house to return Tony.

Steven comes out to find Jörm and Alan hiding in the tiger cage. They tell him that they have taken Tony to a "mobile clinic," and that he'll be returned, fitted with a grill, in no time.

Dennis arrives in the middle of the conversation. Jacky wakes up partially from his drugged state, and panics at seeing Vlad. He jumps on a mostly-awake Tony and rides him into the house. They crash through various rooms, picking up a guitar on the way, and come flying out of a second-story window. This is the most metal thing any of the neighbors have ever seen.

In the end, Jacky ends up in prison for not keeping up with his child support payments. Dennis goes to jail as well, and when he gets out he finds that Vlad is dead, so he takes up busking near Steven's house. Jörm gives up on the grills scheme and goes on to try to sell Strong Arm Lances exercises equipment at inappropriate professional conventions. Alan goes back to mundane dentistry. And Steven is mauled by Vlad and Tony and ends up in a nursing facility on a constant stream of pain meds for life.

GenCon GM report 1: Dread

Thank you to everyone who came by and bought a copy of Bunny Money Gunny at GenCon! The game got a lot of positive feedback, and I'll be announcing its future soon.

The President tries to start a nuclear war ...

In between hustling my own game, I ran a few RPGs for Games on Demand. The first was on Saturday, when we played a round of Dread: Cold War edition. My notes are a bit sketchy, but I'll try to give game mechanics in [brackets] to the best of my memory. A "pull" is to remove one block from the tower, a "no pull" is a choice to give up rather than risking having to make a pull.

Our cast of characters was:

• The President: Harrison Ford, an actor-turned politician with secret Communist sympathies
• The General: Isaac Westin, an ex-hippie who moved up the ranks by exploiting his contacts on the enemy side to which he was feeding classified information
• The Journalist: Levar Burton, who witnessed the president kill a man in cold blood years ago
• The CIA Agent: Nathan Malcolm Reynolds, a double agent protecting these great United States of America
• The Groundskeeper: Joe Young, who gave the family fortune to his disabled sister
• The Hippie: Wall Flower, a member of the peace movement with a "nuts not nukes" agenda

The story began with the Hippie protesting outside the gates of Camp David. When some mechanical noises interrupt the chirping of birds and rustling of leaves, she goes to investigate [pull]. She finds that several armored military vehicles painted with a hammer and sickle had driven up the access road to Camp David. She goes back to warn the guards at the gate that the communists were coming -- to which the guard dismissively replies "you're already here."

... and the Journalist tries to stop it.

The CIA Agent happens by at this moment, and since the Hippie had been a reliable informant in the past, he instructs the guards to let the hippies inside [pull], and goes to find the President.

Meanwhile, the Journalist had been waiting outside the command center bunker for hours for a scheduled interview with the President. A panicked staffer bursts out of the command center and asks the Journalist to help her find the President, because there was an emergency phone call. The Journalist, CIA Agent, and staffer all discover the President [pull] out walking his dog (a big shaggy dog named Chewie). They return to the bunker, where the President is told by the top Admiral back in Washington that Soviet nuclear submarines had slipped through the US's defenses and appeared outside five major cities -- New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, -- and the line goes dead. The President takes a big swig from his father's lucky silver flask, but not an incapacitating one [pull].

The Groundskeeper catches sight of a helicopter painted with a hammer and sickle descending over one of the fields, where the General was relaxing. The Groundskeeper turns on the sprinklers just in time for the helicopter door to open [pull]. Six Soviet soldiers and a man in a suit with a giant briefcase emerge and immediately get soaked. The Hippie sees the helicopter as well, and slips away from the detention cell at the guard station [pull] to come to the field.

When the President, CIA Agent, and Journalist arrive, they are addressed by the man in the suit. He says he has come to make a deal. If the US agrees to immediately withdraw all of its troops from abroad and dismantle its nuclear arsenal, he will call the submarine captains on his giant Cold-War-era satellite phone and give them the secret code to call off their attack. But if the submarines don't receive the code from him in one hour, they will nuke five American cities.

The President turns to the General and asks "We can spare five cities, right?" The CIA Agent sounds the alarm [pull], calling all support staff to hide in the command bunker. The Hippie comes out of the woods (not wanting to be shot by jittery Soviet soldiers [no pull]), and is hustled of to the bunker by the Secret Service [no pull].

Meanwhile, the Groundskeeper sneaks around back of the helicopter [pull] and gets in through the door on the far side. Finding the controls similar to his riding mower [pull], he takes off and hovers several yards in the air above the Soviets.

The President and the General initially decide to threaten a nuclear counterstrike. The General finds the Big Red Button [pull], which is attached to its own satellite phone connection. The CIA Agent quickly talks them into an alternative plan. His files show [pull] that the Soviet leader who is here is Alexei Dmitrovich, a dedicated Party man who has two adult sons and an estranged wife living in Leningrad. If they can get the phones reconnected, he can have his agents in Russia kidnap the Soviet leader's family to use as leverage.

The Journalist volunteers to help, as he has extensive skills with electronics and computers. He and the CIA Agent manage to sneak out of Camp David [pull] and find the cut telephone wires right under the noses of the troops in the armored vehicles, who are distracted doing the crossword puzzle in the back of Pravda [pull]. They reconnect the phones [pull].

Returning to Camp David, the CIA Agent calls his contacts [pull], and in 15 minutes they have Dmitrovich's three family members [three pulls] in custody.

Meanwhile, the support staff in the security bunker is rife with rumors about what's going on. The emerging consensus is that the President is a Communist agent, and that he's meeting with a Soviet leader to sell out the USA. They whip themselves into a frenzy and find an unlocked weapons cabinet to arm themselves [pull]. The Hippie makes her case to the army Private [pull] and Secret Service agent [pull] guarding the bunker, the latter of whom recalls that he did see a book by a "Marx" on the President's bedside table. They all march toward the field. The secret service agent convinces his counterpart guarding the President to join the rebellion as well {pull].

The General decides he wants to cut a deal with the Soviets while they wait for confirmation of the CIA's capture of the Soviet leader's family. He approaches the Soviets, carrying the Big Red Button. He gives them the password he used to use in his days feeding intel to the enemy [failed pull -- tower collapses]. Unfortunately the Soviets mis-hear him, and so they shoot him dead.

The Soviet leader announces that he has changed the terms of the deal. Because the General tried to assault them and a team of crack commandos has apparently stolen their helicopter, they demand that the US give up Alaska as well in order to call off the nuclear attack. The CIA Agent makes a counter-offer: Call off the attack, or we will execute your family. The Soviet leader decides that while he could spare his ex-wife, his sons have promising careers ahead of them [pull]. So he agrees to call off the attacks -- if he can get through in time, as the hour is nearly up.

He calls the sub in New York in time [pull]. He calls the sub in Los Angeles in time [pull]. He calls the sub Baltimore in time [pull]. He calls the sub in New Orleans in time [pull].

At this moment, the Groundskeeper decides to try to land the helicopter [failed pull -- tower collapses]. Unfortunately for him, landing is harder than taking off. While swerving to try to avoid landing on the Soviet soldiers, the helicopter unbalances and crashes into the ground, killing him. The main rotor breaks off and comes tumbling toward the Soviet leader, who is dialing the last sub, outside Houston. The CIA Agent sacrifices himself [deliberately knocking over the tower] to push the Soviet leader to safety, and he makes the call in time [pull].

The President now decides he doesn't trust the Soviets, and that he should launch a preemptive nuclear strike anyway. He slips away from the staff mob [pull] and grabs the Big Red Button from the General's corpse. The Journalist spots him and dives in to stop him. [Because the tower had just been reset and this was the climactic moment, I had the President and Journalist simply play Jenga until one of them toppled the tower.] In the end, the Journalist seized control of the Big Red Button and removed the President and General's activation keys, averting nuclear war. The President's malfeasance had now been amply documented, and he was sure to be impeached.

Updated Fiasco: You Are A Cat playset

I finally figured out the correct fonts and made a cool cover image for You Are A Cat, my Fiasco playset about being a cat. Download it here!

Game Chef 2014: Spy Party

This year I decided to take a shot at Game Chef, a 10-day game design contest. This year the theme was "there is no book," and the ingredients (of which 2-3 should be included in your game) were absorb, wild, sickle, and glitter. My entry is titled "Spy Party."

Spy Party is a one-shot RPG in which players are communist (hammer and sickle) spies who have come to a makeover party in suburban Washington DC in hopes of exchanging intel with their undercover contacts. They must absorb fragments of knowledge from other players to figure out the USA's secret plans and weaknesses, while keeping up their cover of frivolous gossip and trying out glittery nail polish. Players paint each others' nails different colors to indicate levels of trust, while certain color combinations trigger in-game events. At the end, the colors of players' nails allow them to determine each others' fate (e.g. who is put on trial for espionage? Who is rewarded by your home country?)

Download Spy Party

Fiasco: YOU ARE A CAT

On a whim I created a Fiasco playset titled YOU ARE A CAT. We tried out a three-player game that went well.

Our story began with nearly-identical fluffy tortoiseshell cats Robin (male) and Arthur (female) stuffed into the same cat carrier on the way from the animal shelter to their new forever home. Their new human had intended to adopt Arthur, but due to a mix-up at the shelter, both cats had gotten put in the carrier. They arrive home and the human -- a single woman -- discovers that she now has two cats. Robin decides to act extra adorable to try to convince the human to keep him and not send him back to the shelter. He's in luck, as the human is unable to get through to the shelter on the phone to complain about the mix-up.

Arthur soon discovers a third cat in the house -- this one also a nearly identical fluffy tortie -- emerging from the dryer vent. The new cat introduces himself as Killer, Robin's future self come back to warn his past self against making a grave mistake. He demonstrates his future knowledge by telling Arthur not to eat a certain tasty-looking houseplant, as it is poisonous. The human discovers Killer and assumes he is Robin.

Later in the day, Arthur is curled up in the human's lap being adorable when Robin enters the room. Arthur tells Robin about Killer, but Robin is unconvinced. To try to prove Killer wrong, he eats a big bite of the tasty looking plant -- and immediately pukes all over the floor.

The next day, Robin is sitting in the human's lap while she does some work on the computer. He sees her log into something labeled "TOP SECRET HIGH SECURITY," and the screen shows "Nuclear Launch Code: password123." Robin bats at the keyboard, accidentally initiating the launch sequence, which the human quickly cancels and then shoos Robin off her lap.

Killer confronts Robin, explaining that he is Robin's future self come back from a terrible post-apocalyptic dystopia with a dire warning. Killer insists that Robin should forget all about the nuclear codes he saw. Robin denies this, and loudly proclaims "password123! password123!"

Arthur wanders by and overhears the nuclear code and asks Killer about it (though she can't remember whether it's "password 123," "password 456," or "password321"). Arthur completely believes Killer's story and becomes very concerned about what Robin might do with the nuclear codes.

That night, Robin goes back on the computer to research what "nuclear launch codes" are. He Googles a bunch of information about the Cold War, and -- lacking any knowledge of historical and geopolitical context -- becomes convinced that Russia is located just around the bend in the road that they can see from the front window of the house. He is also certain that Russia intends to attack and destroy them, and that Killer is a Russian double agent.

Killer offers to take Robin and Arthur around the bend to show them that it is not, in fact, Russia, and to convince them of the terrible fate that awaits them if they do not forget about the nuclear launch codes. They all slip out through the dryer vent and walk around the bend. They meet another cat, named Coby, who knows Killer. Robin accuses Coby of being a Russian agent and asks him how to spell his name in Cyrillic (to which Coby replies "spell?"). Robin sees a teddy bear inside one of the houses on the new street and takes this as proof that this is in fact Russia, since Russia's symbol is a bear.

Killer leads the other two cats through a crack in the fence into a junkyard in order to show them what kind of future awaits them. He kills a mouse, to show what they'll have to do for food after the nuclear war. Arthur is worried because the mouse has no sauce on it (unlike good wet canned food). Robin dismisses the concern, because he finds an old pizza box with cheese stuck to the lid.

Back at the house, Robin decides to launch a preemptive strike on Russia. He gets on the computer and starts logging in to the nuclear launch site. Just before he is able to enter the launch password, Killer chews through the computer cord, shutting it down. He runs away as the human -- hearing the ruckus -- comes downstairs to find Robin typing on a dead computer. She takes him upstairs and shuts him in her room to prevent further mischief.

Killer talks to Arthur about a more long-term solution to Robin's insistence on starting a nuclear war. They decide that they can get him in trouble by peeing on everything, since that is a male cat behavior. They pee everywhere in the house -- except in the bedroom where Robin is sleeping.

When the human comes out in the morning, she initially blames Arthur. However, Robin emerges and takes the pee as a sign that he should pee everywhere too. The human gets upset and takes both Robin and Arthur back to the shelter. The shelter personnel figure out that Arthur was the cat she meant to adopt, and they take Robin back.

In the end, Robin is given several rounds of gross medicine for his urinary "problem," but is then adopted by a new family. They do not have access to the nuclear launch system, but he discovers that "password123" gets him into their bank account, Amazon account, eBay, etc. With their finances ruined by Robin's meddling, they are forced to send him back to the shelter.

Arthur lives a nice life with the human. He overhears Killer telling Coby about how he tricked these other cats into believing he was from the future, and so Arthur drops a flower pot on him. The human discovers Killer and takes him to the shelter, where he is promptly adopted by a nice family.

Playtest -- The Last Two People On Earth

One of my projects is to create some roleplaying games that are specifically designed for just two players. I won't claim an extensive enough knowledge of the RPG market to claim that such games are rare, but they certainly present a unique challenge. For my first attempt, I took on a post-apocalyptic theme. The two players are, so far as they know, the last two people on Earth.

The mechanics are pretty obviously inspired by Fiasco. For the setup phase, players each roll a pool of dice, then use the numbers shown to pick items out of a table to create the scenario. The scenario defines things like the nature of the apocalypse, how the players' characters survived, and how they met. For the main game, the players re-roll their dice and use them to select scene prompts which the other player must then work into their scene. At the end, the players use their remaining dice to select their characters' ultimate fates.

In our game, we decided that the apocalypse had been caused when the government finally tried to control the minds of everyone who had been drinking fluoridated water their entire life. This didn't go so well, and so everyone died, and now packs of wild dogs roamed the ruins. Our characters were Justin Bieber, who survived due to prodigious consumption of vitamins, and Lieutenant Colonel Dolores Gripley, who had just emerged from several years in a secret government cryogenics experiment. They met while scavenging in the ruins of the Cedar St. Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh. Justin appealed to Dolores for help, because while the store was still full of food, he (as a pampered pop star) had no idea how to cook it. Dolores didn't recognize him (having been frozen during his entire career), but she took pity on him.

Accompanied by Justin's trusty dog Artie, the two set off to the park by the river to eat, when they came upon the corpses of Justin's fans who had been leaving his show at PNC Park when everything went wrong. They both fled onto the 9th Street Bridge -- Justin because the bodies were covered with bugs, and Dolores because she hallucinated that they were coming back to life. Upon hearing Dolores's story, Justin tried to go back, thinking his fans would help him. Instead of his fans, though, he encountered a pack of wild dogs. Artie ran ahead, and somehow charmed the wild dogs. Justin reasoned that just like he was famous among humans, Artie must be famous among dogs, and so the wild dogs were his dog fans.

Dolores was increasingly confused, so Justin turned on his radio, hoping to hear one of his songs so that he could show Dolores how famous he was. Instead, the radio picked up a bulletin calling for any survivors to rendezvous at the WESA studio in the Southside.

Justin, Dolores, Artie, and the wild dogs proceeded to the Southside where they found the WESA staff as well as several visiting NPR personalities barricaded in the studio. Carl Kasell was guarding the entrance with a machine gun. He confessed that he was Justin's father. He had wanted to reconnect, but he couldn't afford a ticket to one of Justin's shows. In order to verify the identities of anyone seeking refuge in the studio -- to make sure they weren't part of the government conspiracy -- the studio dispatched a team of crack investigative reporters. Steve Inskeep, who had for some reason been turned into a minotaur, came out to check out Dolores and Justin. Justin grabbed Steve's microphone and sang an impassioned concert all night, proving his identity and bringing tears to everyone listening.

In the end, everyone from the studio set out down the Ohio River on the Gateway Clipper (renamed the Gateway Bieber). Justin reveled in his new NPR-listener fan base, and Dolores fell in love with Carl Kasell.

Draft rules -- The Last Two People On Earth