Blazing Rose

A full-grown Actual Play recording, from Creation to Epilogues, of a Blazing Rose one-shot has appeared under the baleful gaze of The Walking Eye! Listen in as Bast, Gabriel, Merlin, and Thor battle it out for the attentions and affections of... an ordinary, somewhat bookish mortal? We've come right back around to the "Forever" setting from early brainstorming! ^.^

Huge props to Kevin for producing the episode, and to Jason of Diagonally Through the Woods and blue_moth for joining us to play!

The Pretty Princess Edition of the game is coming, I promise y'all that. I want to get me a sweet layout like that of Willow Palecek's Escape from Tentacle City, you see...

With Forge Midwest 2009 behind me, I am pleased to announce that Blazing Rose: A Story Game of Romantic Rivalry is available for purchase by the general public for the first time.

Hit the Lulu storefront for your copy! $15 for the same gorgeous perfect-bound paperback that debuted this past weekend, $5 for a straight-up PDF download.

These prices will only last until Gen Con, so get one soon! Then play it, and let me know how it goes!

Salutations to everyone who's bought a copy of the Blazing Rose too-pretty-to-be-an-ashcan edition!

As promised in the book, here are links to download the record sheets.

Story
Beloved
Rival

Please contact me here or via email with any questions, critique, or play reports you may have!

The books came in! It was like Christmas, getting the notification that the package was waiting for me, then picking it up and seeing how they all turned out.

All the dire warnings I received about misprints... did not come true. The books turned out fine! The cover looks slick and pretty, the text is readable, the artwork looks crisper than it does on screen, and it just feels right as you flip through it.

I mean, nothing's perfect; I may scoot the margins out from the inside by a couple tenths of an inch for any future print runs, I'll have to see if bexplant has a high-res version of the back cover art so there aren't JPG artifacts in the final cut, and as I expected, the record sheets at the back are garbage (I'm going to print some full-sized sheets off and put them in folders for people). But as ashcans go, it's all friggin' gorgeous.

Thanks to everyone who's contributed and helped out! Now remains only to see how it's received at the convention, whether I priced it right, etc. So excited!

I placed the order for 10 copies of Blazing Rose: A Story Game of Romantic Rivalry - Ashcan Edition at 11:00 last night. The order status is now at "fulfilling," meaning it's been sent to the manufacturer. Even if it takes the longest possible time per Lulu's production and shipping estimates, I will have the books in hand by the time of the convention. (Though if it hasn't shipped before Wednesday of next week, I'll likely do a local print-shop run preemptively.)

I also sent off the PDF to several locals who volunteered to read the game text and give critique. Thus begins the tough-love process of gathering up all the things that need to be changed before Blazing Rose gets dolled up in a final edition. I'll let you know here when the ashcan becomes available for the whole wide world to read and eviscerate!

I mentioned in a meeting at work today that the Blazing Rose "pre-release edition" was likely to go to press by tomorrow morning. We share this kind of stuff, we're pretty chill like that. Somebody suggested we should play it, as a team-building activity. There's six of us, after all! I find this idea downright ticklish, unlikely though it is to happen (my guess is there will be a lot of second thoughts once I admit it takes about three hours). Only one of them, other than me, is even distantly familiar with RPGs. I bet it'd be a great dynamic!

It will go to press tomorrow morning, no doubt of that. I'm crossing off the to-dos as I accomplish them. It's just a countdown, at this point!

Well, my friends, the time is at hand. Tonight (...into early this morning) I wrote the Play Advice chapter in one sitting, meaning I have, at last, a front-to-back text for the very first time!

The following tasks remain:
* Incorporate some feedback I got on the example Conflict. Only partially done. I'll need to do some more thorough restructuring of it later, but I got a couple of tweaks in at least.
* Run through the early portions of the book and do minuscule tweaks like replacing straight quotes with proper left and right quote marks. It's a disadvantage of writing in a plain-text editor instead of a word processor for the raw text phase, which I realized about halfway through. So I need to go back and do that for the start of the book. Granted, it's an ashcan, so I could just leave it, but it shouldn't take long.
* Make some minor tweaks to the covers, such as changing "for 3-5 players" to the finally decided-upon "for 3-6 players".
* Make some similar minor tweaks to the character sheets, and add stripped-down A5-sized versions to the back of the ashcan. The A5 sized sheets were a total hack, basically just scaling the 8.5x11 sheets until they fit the width of the book pages--I ran out of time to do them right. So making fit-to-purpose character sheets will be a project for the summer, before Gen Con. Who uses a copy machine to run off character sheets from an RPG book these days, anyway? It's all about the free downloadables. ;P
* Time permitting, do up a Table of Contents. (But probably not.)
* Send it to the printers!

Given print-on-demand turnaround times, I will need to expedite the order, but some saner friends of mine talked me down from an initial print run of 25 to one of 10, so I'm not going to break the bank. Even if the print run is a botch, as some fear. :P

The ashcan's debut will take place at Forge Midwest 2009, in Madison, WI on April 10. After that I'll see about setting up the Lulu storefront for actual purchasing, and get the announcement out to various gaming forums. Then it's just a matter of waiting (and hounding those buyers who'll give me email addresses) for playtest feedback, and doing final layout over the course of the summer.

Phew! This thing is for real, ladies and gents!

Here, have a celebratory stack of previews:
Setting - Art by E. Escher
The "Aww" Rule - Art by rosebudkb
Conflict Example - Art by E. Escher

I've noticed some of the fonts aren't embedded correctly in those PDFs (italic text becomes this ugly Arial-looking thing), but I'm too tired to fix it right now. Maybe I'll have time while doing the rest of the miscellaneous wrap-up.

About to wrap up the Conflict chapter. I could probably end it where it is, but if I'm honest with myself, it needs a big fully-worked example to cap it off, so that's the last remaining hurdle for Chapter 4.

After that only the Play Advice chapter remains, which I anticipate being breezy and quick to write. I thus anticipate having a finished PDF by the middle of the week (tomorrow if I can), which I can send out to editors for feedback and upload to Lulu for creation of a proof copy. I may have to shell out some cash to get the shipping expedited, because--fingers crossed that the proof looks OK--I want to then immediately turn around a print run I can sell at the convention that starts April 10. Not a lot of room for error.

If Lulu's turnaround times aren't sufficient, my fallback is to run off a stack of coil-bound copies at the FedEx Office around the corner, and have those on hand for the convention. But it'd be really, really nice to have actual perfect-bound books, so that's what I'm going to fight for.

Hmm. Idea: order a proof NOW, just to see what happens. If it's all good, then I should safely be able to order a print run as soon as the text is complete.

Nah, scratch those prior thoughts. There's not enough time for me to pull off a non-rush proof order, and paying rush job + expedited shipping for a single book is like using $20 bills to blow my nose.

Uploading the work-in-progress and looking at it through all of Lulu's preview tools, it seems OK. I may just chance it and order the convention print run without a proof, HORRIBLE IDEA though that is. If there are minor problems, well, oh no. It's an ashcan, that's how it rolls. If there are major problems, I'll be out some money (hmm, to what creative uses could I put ~25 badly misprinted A5-size RPG books?), but still have enough time to fall back to the FedEx option. These are the sacrifices one makes for a deadline.

When I get to publishing the final edition this summer, though, there's no reason to take such wild chances. Proof copy in advance, or stick with the ashcan for Gen Con.

It's a good thing I'm not in this for the money, or I'd be a horrible failure already. ^.^;

Things are coming together, everyone. For real!

Missing the Valentine's Day deadline kicked me into gear, showing me just how much work really needed to be done and proving that I need to buckle down and make Blazing Rose my top priority if I want it to happen. I started going gung-ho into a final draft, editing and laying out artwork etc. in a single step... but a chapter or so in, realized this was probably not the best way of going about it. First off, it was discouragingly slow going. And without a full-text draft in the hands of outside playtesters, I won't know for sure if the text needs substantial revision. What's the point of locking myself into a layout if I might need to make big changes to the text to make it understandable? I'd end up having to rearrange everything all over again.

So I've decided to go the "ashcan" route for the first release. A draft with only the very basics of text formatting, and a few pictures here and there to preview the cool stuff the artists have given me. It's not pretty: it won't have fancy sidebars or page borders, or even necessarily ideal choices in things like paragraph indents. But it will be the game, the whole game, in print for the first time. And that has me very excited!

Here's a brief preview: the first few pages of the Gameplay chapter, featuring chapter art by bexplant of ConceptJanus.

Blazing Rose coming soon! Seriously!

You know you're a true game designer when you promise and miss a release date. >.< I'm a single guy who nonetheless made a Valentine's Day gaffe!

That said, the book is humming along at a pace it's not seen since the creation of the beta playtest PDF. It won't be long now. The art is in place (including a brand new piece from dreamling!), the layout looks rockin', and the text is starting to make real sense. I need to come up with A5-sized versions of the character sheets, and producing an index will be a whole new adventure, but I've learned a lot about desktop publishing in the last few weeks as I made the push for this date. I'm feeling all right despite my shame.

Bear with me in this my first foray, and you'll see the finished product soon.

Just for fun, here's what I came up with for back cover copy:

I'd love to have a striking script font for the cover and chapter titles, something romantic but which still "blazes." (Upon further reflection, perhaps an artist-rendered title would be better for the cover. But we'll see.) I had the good fortune to stumble across Fontspace, which has loads of fonts for perusal and a tidy way of previewing your text in all of them. Most of them are also either free, or require only a nominal fee, for commercial use. Neat!

Behind the cut are a handful of them I thought looked pretty cool. The one at the top is the lame "French Script MT" I've been using so far as a placeholder. What do you think? Any stand-outs?

( Calligraphic love letter signature sweetness )

The second one is pretty nice, but the design of the "o" makes it look like "Blazing Rase," which is unfortunate.

#3 and #4 are quite the pair, the former emphasizing the "romantic" part, the latter emphasizing the "rivalry." In fact, those capital Rs may be just a little too weaponized for my tastes.

After that we go more for readability, including some non-script types. #5 has sort of that Shakespearean feel, but may be a little too medieval/conventional. #6, pretty straightforward... a shame the "a" doesn't flow properly into the "z". And the final one is lean and crisp... a contender.

I guess I'd favor one of 3 or 7. Maybe 3 for the cover and 7 for the chapters? But I don't have a sharp eye for graphic design, so I'd love some input. Any cool romantic fonts you've stumbled across in your travels?

Sometimes, there's just not enough love for everybody...

Valentine's Day 2009.

I thought I'd get a good night's sleep tonight to offset the crazy weekend. Hah. Not only is my sleep schedule all out of whack due to 2 AM gaming, but these Blazing Rose-related impressions from the convention won't leave me alone until I get them out of my head.

First, a couple of cool (paraphrased) quotes:

"Thanks for playing my game, Ron. I know you said you weren't all that interested in playtesting this weekend."
"Oh, this game is way beyond alpha. It needs only a little cleaning up before it's ready to go."

Richard, who's been running the same D&D campaign since the '70s: "I couldn't believe it. Six men sat down and played a game about romance, and it was great fun!"

Granted, Ron hadn't seen the state of the text, only the play procedures as taught by the designer, but these kinds of things are immensely heartening. Thanks to everyone who played BR this weekend!

Other observations:

( Lots of little blurbs on what I gauged to be working well and not in the sessions )

Anyway, it was a big success! I'll try to get something a little more Actual Play-ish up later. For now, sleep is long overdue.

Oof. It's midnight before a work day, but I made it. Ish. Tomorrow is Forge Midwest, an indie games convention that happens to be in my own town this year. I am super excited about getting Blazing Rose out into the open for people to play, enjoy, and rip into tiny pieces!

In the interest of the latter, I've thrown together a for-public-consumption "beta" playtest draft. It isn't quite where I'd hoped it to be--it is drastically scant on examples, most notably, and the text is still very very rough--but it will, I think, suffice. It does feature such cool things as (somewhat mangled) inserts of new Meyerson art and a brand spanking new play advice section in the last chapter.

So, without further ado:
The playtest document itself
Series record sheet
Beloved record sheet
Rival record sheet

Now I collapse. And hope I don't totally sleep through my big debut here, ha.

EDIT: Aww, crud, in looking this over I just realized I left out you LJ "brain trust" people from the credits page. I promise I won't forget you in the final edition!

I mentioned a while back that the talented Rebecca Meyerson would be lending her creative input to the book. Here's a first look at some of that work!

( The rose aflame: 'burning embers' )

Another possible illustration here. Gorgeous! See her DeviantArt gallery for much more of her work, as well as notices of upcoming showings.

Willow's advice regarding artwork is starting to pay off. Expect more artwork, and more artists, to be featured here soon!

I now know I can bash out a largely-from-scratch draft in approximately four hours. Largely from scratch meaning I reused only the prior Rival/Beloved/Series sheet designs (as templates; all were modified) and about half a dozen notecards' worth of actual text from the prior draft.

Hah. Playtest #3 begins--I say "begins" because we may experiment with series play--tomorrow night, players' schedules willing.

In sadder news, I cannot find my copy of Riviera: The Promised Land, the GBA game that inspired Blazing Rose to begin with. I fear it got lost when I moved apartments in November, or maybe when I went on vacation. It might still turn up in some odd corner, but the chances are getting slimmer as I progress in my spring cleaning...

I guess it could just give me an excuse to buy the PSP version, tho. xD

I promised a post about the second playtest, so here I am--late as always!

This was a Comedic, Friendly game; people were in the mood for something light-hearted, I suppose! Interestingly, they also went with a school theme, this time a retro-futurist Space Academy on the moon. The Beloved was a lovely blue-haired Martian bishounen, and the Rivals a nerd, a "laserball" jock, a Model Intergalactic Council rep, and a male cheerleader. Most of whom exhibited rather fluid sexualities... though in the end the straightest of them (the nerd) won the man. Boy. Thing.

It was much harder to come up with ten points of improvement this time, as overall things went pretty durn well. It's mostly about plugging little gaps and making procedural changes so the thing overall flows better. Character creation was a clumsy affair that resulted in such puzzling Attributes as "Strong Aroma", for instance, and we really seemed to struggle to kick off good scenes toward the end of the game.

( Without further ado, here's the plan for v0.3 )

I realize that's probably hard to follow because I haven't been chronicling the entire thought process, so there's lots of references to things I haven't mentioned before. Downloading and flipping through the playtest documents may help, but really, the takeaway is this: the second round of playtesting went very well, and the next set of revisions are more screw-tightening and hole-patching than redesigning or rebuilding. Which I think is phenomenal progress for this young of a design!

P.S. If you'd like to see some of the discussion that led to the above decisions, as well as "meet" the playtesters who contributed many of these ideas, see this thread on the Grumbling Dwarf!

There's been a fair chunk of discussion on what gameplay changes to make for next draft. There's quite a few, but none of them as drastic as those from the first playtest, so I'll take that as a sign of progress! I'll give it one more day for people to throw in any lingering comments, then make decisions and do up a post like the aforelinked.

In the meantime, here are the documents from which I ran the second playtest. As usual, they're more interesting as process artifacts than anything, but you might be able to puzzle out a game from them, heh.

Rules
Series sheet
Beloved sheet
Rival sheet
NPC sheet

I've done quite a bit with the viewing list since the last major update!

( Review: El-Hazard )

( Review: To Heart )

( Review: Rumbling Hearts )

*

I also read Shooting the Moon, but unfortunately, it's been too long since I read it for me to put down accurate impressions here. I can say that at least two cool takeaways--the Beloved's values becoming attributes, and adding character traits in play--made it into Blazing Rose's second draft in one form or another. I definitely owe it to Emily Care Boss to purchase this one, as well as its predecessor Breaking the Ice, since they were the trailblazers in the "romantic fiction" genre of story game.

Adding to the reading list: The Shab-al-Hiri Roach. Recommended as another semi-competitive game about jockeying for social status.

Hi all! Do you still remember me? ^.^

Tonight held the second, also rousingly successful, playtest of Blazing Rose.

The overall consensus was that both the theme and the mechanics are solid, it just needs work on the procedures of play. Biggest compliment of the night: "I actually like the mechanics better than [game which shall not be named]". Heh.

Expect to see a thorough recap, as well as more reviews of inspirational anime, the second batch of playtest documents, and more, soon!