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Just spent last night reading the introductory scenario to Vox. It's got the surreal in spades, plus the intro scenario ALSO determines initial character generation.
So, yet another game to talk on and on about, like I do with Hellas? Oh yes, I do believe so. I'm *really* liking what I see sofar. The only strange thing is that there's a real tight separation between the GM and Players' sections, yet the Player's section has lots of GM-ish spoilery stuff in it, like the entirety of the introductory scenario.
Still, I think I'm going to run this, soon. Shane is going to be busy in July (well, me too) so the epic Hellas game I've got on deck will be pushed back a few weeks anyway. We'll see how fast I can wrap up the rest of the Tenra text first.
IMO, and from what I've seen of it thus far, Vox is incredible. Well-written, extremely interesting and compelling, and one of the first games of surreality that seemed to Get It Right. Only problem is that, unlike other small press stuff that people reading this are aware of (Do, S7S, Mythender, Psi Run and so on) Mike F kinda designed it in a Vacuum; he posted updates on his blog about release dates and samples and stuff, but didn't blog along about it openly. On one hand, this means that he finished it much more quickly: Instead of Talking about Writing the Game, he simply Wrote the Game. But, it also means that when it was released, it was released into essentially a vacuum. No one knows anything about this game. If I didn't share a booth with Mike last year at GenCon, *I* wouldn't have known anything about it.
Anyway, if you like surreal games, or the concept behind the oWoD Wraith ("Someone else at the table plays the voice in your head"), check this game out.
I'll have more info once I've read through it more, then more once I've played it.
-Andy
July 3 2009, 15:12:19 UTC 2 years ago
Transparency Part 8.3
The "spoilery stuff" in the Player's section, from my perspective, isn't spoilery to the same degree. It drops a few hints about what might be going on, but doesn't get into the real metaplot per se. I think the best way to explain what I think I did was I drew a line in the sand halfway between Player and GM, and then I moved the line a smidge towards GM. Obviously some people may disagree with where that line is, but from my point it was intentional and is right where I wanted it.As to the problem of publishing in a vacuum: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that situationally I really wasn't able to do as much of that as I could have. OK, that's probably BS. Surely over the course of three years I could have done something. But for me, looking back over development, there wasn't any time when (at the time) I could look at what I had and say "I should blog about this." Partly this is because Jerry and I were working on Hellas, and talking that up. Partly this is because my job, marital status, and place of residence all changed during that time. Vox seems more important to me NOW, but at the time it just wasn't tops.
Now this is all excuses of course, and the real issue here is that really I've not ever truly been a part of the Indie RPG community as such, and still am not. There are about five Indie People who I know and who know me, but I doubt anyone outside that circle really knows my name. Several big name indie guys blew by the Khepera booth without really knowing who I was. Mike Pondsmith and Steve Jackson know who I am, but I doubt that Luke Crane could pick me out of a lineup, and he was at the Khepera Booth at Origins every fifteen minutes.
Heck, Chris O'Neil (9th Level Games) was standing next to the booth for thirty minutes and didn't seem to have any idea who I was, and I licensed Ninja Burger to him just a few years ago! Even when people talk about Hellas, 9 times out of 10 they say it's "by Jerry Grayson," even though my name is first alphabetically on the cover. I'm not insulted by that, as Jerry is a better interview anyway, but it is indicative of the problem here. If it can be called a problem.
What people know of me is Ninja Burger, not me. That's partly by design, and I guess that's an unfortunate design in several respects, but that's how it's evolved. I put the license first, and I never really immersed myself in the community - at least not in the ways that are apparently the important ways. I did my stint as RPG.net Columns Editor, for example, but I guess that still left me somewhat above what was going on, rather than inside it.
This has all been conscious, for better or worse, and I'm not sure at this stage I can do much to change it; anything I do now would feel artificial, trying to force my way into the party upstairs after it's already underway instead of sitting downstairs alone banging on the ceiling with my broom. "Hey guys can I play too?" and then I get stuck way out in Right Field. At heart I don't think I'm a game designer so much as I'm a writer who also designs games, and I think because of that my introverted, nigh-solipsistic tendencies sort of make it difficult to break out of that shell.
Transparency (such as this) is probably a good way to go towards adjusting the dials, but frankly no matter what I try it will always feel to me like I'm being introduced to the guys at the bowling alley by a friend: "Hey this guy's cool too." Or like getting dating advice: "OK, you need to be confident and smile a lot." "You should compliment her on her clothes." "You should visit these five Indie Game websites every day and post in discussions at least three times a week."
It's all valid advice, but it's also the sort of thing that never worked for me in school, and I don't know if it'll work now; it has to happen organically if at all, and I've always been more mechanical than organic.
Someone find me an emotion chip.
July 3 2009, 15:27:27 UTC 2 years ago
July 4 2009, 07:24:39 UTC 2 years ago
I also owe a bunch of people free contributor copies, and I need to make some available for review and post-release playtesting (for v1.1).
July 3 2009, 16:06:41 UTC 2 years ago