So I'm going to PAX!

I've been on a tight budget for a while, and hadn't planned on attending any conventions. But last friday an opportunity came knocking (as illustrated above), and these last several months of overtime have earned me both the disposable income and the time off I needed to attend.

This means. . .several things.

First, PLAYTESTS! At each of the three conventions I've gone to, I've wound up spontaneously doing tests & demonstrations for one of my games; mainly Trigger Discipline, since these were all anime-oriented cons. This time, I've got plenty of different games I could take for a spin; Court deCapitate and Trigger Discipline are both ready for some more test runs, and there's an embarrassing number of other options I could have playable by friday- Divers, Mass Effect, Avatar. . .

Mind you, I'm not sure just how many of those I'll be able to get shipshape. So I'll take requests. If you'll be attending PAX, and would be interested in trying out one of my game ideas yourself? Let me know via the comments and I'll do my best to have it ready. And of course, even if you're not inclined to try a game or two I'd still love to meet you guys in person. Send me an e-mail and I'll give you my phone number.

Of course, one of my other priorities here is going to be the blog itself. This site is supposed to be a portfolio of sorts, and I've been unearthing alot of old documents as of late while reorganizing my hard drive- piles of various campaign ideas & brainstorm transcripts. It's high time I started sharing some of those. . .

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Court d'Capitate: Beta playtest rules

Oh right, you guys still need the rules for how to *play* this thing, don't you?.

Fine, here you go.

I've been striving to crank this document out in my spare moments, which are still fairly scarce; let's just say that my last 2-week paycheck had 96 hours on it. You can thank a couple different folks I ran into IRL I ran into last week for providing the motivation; turns out they've actually been hoping to see more of this. (Seriously, it gets hard to keep making these things in a feedback vacuum. Those of you who do make those thoughtful comments are helping more than you could know.)

It's been a little surprising to realize just how bad I am at doing manuals. I have no problem explaining my games when I demonstrate them to someone in person, but when the time comes to lay out all that info in the form of a text document I tend to gloss over lots of vital details. Attempting to buckle down and lay everything out step by step produces instructions that, as someone said about an early draft of Trigger Discipline, "read like a legal document". Hopefully I've been able to put a little more natural voice into this one.

Can you tell this another one of those sleep-deprived posts? If not, you will soon.

I've gotta balance this part of the game first, but I can tell you now how those Mastermind cards will work. You each who you're playing as from several random draws, but your identity is kept secret for as long as you like. Revealing your identity grants you the benefits of your character (such as larger hand sizes, cheaper turn point costs, conditional bonuses, that kind of thing) but also makes you a target- you now have a Luck and Paranoia score, and can be targeted just like any of your Pawns. On the plus side, your hand becomes the scheme cards you're carrying, so you can reveal ones with defensive abilities.

What makes this interesting is that lots of Event cards involve characters which may or may not be one of the Masterminds a player drew for this game. If the next round's event card involves a speech by Prince Albert, and gives Prince Albert's stats as well as a fat style bonus if someone manages to whack him, and you're playing Prince Albert (and don't want anyone to know). . .well. Things are about to get interesting.

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