Blazing Rose

A Goddess She: Blazing Rose AP on the Walking Eye Podcast

2009-08-21T03:01:00Z

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...

Shout from the Rooftops: First Edition Now Available for Purchase

2009-04-15T02:14:20Z

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!

Waving Cheerily from Afar: First Edition Record Sheet PDFs

2009-04-13T01:13:40Z

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!

A Huge Welcome-Home Hug: Books Arrived!

2009-04-08T16:22:47Z

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!

Waiting for Our First Date: Order Placed

2009-04-02T12:39:43Z

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!

Like a Maiden on Her Wedding Night: The Final Push (for now)

2009-04-02T01:35:54Z

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!

Breathless But Unsatisfied: Text Complete

2009-04-01T05:40:19Z

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.

Amorous Desperation: Stream of Consciousness on An Unwise Publishing Decision I'm About to Make

2009-03-30T14:37:20Z

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. ^.^;

In Ardent Anticipation: A Quick Preview

2009-03-21T22:48:23Z

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!

Long Have I Waited for You, My Love: Slippage

2009-02-15T04:41:06Z

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:

He's perfect for you. You're certain of it.

Mister Right.
Your Beloved.
Your best chance at a happily-ever-after in this crazy world.

There's just one problem...
...well, make that several problems.

A bunch of your friends are smitten with him, too!

You'd better make your move soon. Find some way to stand out,
turn on the charm,
get him to say "I love you" to you and no one else.

Because if you don't win him, one of your friends will.

And it'd be hard to stay friends after that, wouldn't it?

A Heart Dotting Each "i": In Search of a Title Font

2008-12-09T03:20:39Z

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?

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?

I Would Walk Through Flames for You: Let's Do This Thing

2008-12-09T02:06:23Z

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

Valentine's Day 2009.

When to Pop the Question: Initial Thoughts After Forge Midwest

2008-04-14T05:05:49Z

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:

- People universally have a blast with the Creation process! The groans and grins at the Problems that other players add to your sheet were delicious.

- Some up-front explanation that the game is about competition, but is not itself competitive, helped a lot. People grasped it pretty easily when explained in just those words.

- The core conflict resolution mechanics appear to work really well. After the first couple of clarification questions, everybody seemed to roll with it without issue.

- Group 1 gave the feedback that they wanted more ways to be nice to the other players. Group 2 asked for more ways to have other players screw their characters over. I think this suggests I'm not far from the mark on such things, and this feedback is only indicative of particular players' preferences not lining up exactly with the neat balance I've found.

- There are an awful lot of "little pieces," as Ron put it, small and plentiful enough that some inevitably fall through the cracks. Even with the narration bonuses listed on the character sheet, people tended to forget them, leading to dwindling hands of cards. The ability of Assets/Problems to shift the reigning Attribute was so little-used as to have not been there at all. Better to keep it all, and let players explore more options as they grow familiar with the game, or trim it down for an easier learning curve?

- The different checkboxes still confuse people. And as Donald Norman taught me, if people keep making the same mistake when using your thing, that's an indicator of bad design. But again, I may just need to suck it up and let it be a learning curve issue.

- Game length/pacing could be the one remaining major design hurdle to overcome. Handling time ratchets up at a phenomenal rate with more players and less experience in the group. The first game was six players, and we did only two Chapters--out of what would, by the book, be twelve--in the span of some three hours. The second game with four players lasted one Act, resolving the Minor Goal at the halfway mark. So I think I need to loosen up the structure significantly and let people bring things to a close as and when it feels right. (This may also reduce some of the complexity of Episode-Act-Chapter-Scene.)

- The mechanical effects of the Friendly/Confrontational axis may be a little too subtle. I'm not sure it's having a significant impact on the tone of play or the generated fiction.

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.

I Pray Thee Revive Me, Love: On the Eve of Forge Midwest

2008-04-11T05:06:41Z

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!

Fra Pandolf's Hands Worked Busily a Day: First Art

2008-04-07T03:17:59Z

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!

Man, is that a striking piece or what? Potential cover for the ashcan, I'm thinking...

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!

Foreplay: Waiting Until the Last Minute

2008-03-25T04:40:50Z

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

You Can't Go In Expecting Him to Change: Lessons from Playtest 2

2008-03-11T02:45:10Z

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.

Introduce "refresh scenes" for downtime and card replenishment. It kinda bites to be benched for a scene, with little opportunity to affect the fiction of the game. And the source material is full of little character-revealing interludes in which a character isn't involved in any conflict to speak of. Thus, bringing back one piece of what was a very convoluted scene economy I scrapped: a refresh scene. If you don't participate in a conflict, you can narrate a short cutscene, discard any number of cards, and draw back up to 3. And speaking of which:

Revise the scene structure so everyone has the option to participate every turn. Before, a character could be "shut out" of all but their own player's scenes, just by not being invited by each player whose turn it was. The current idea: allow each turn to consist of sub-scenes. The player whose turn it is sets an Attribute as the theme, invites any number of other Rivals (from zero to all) into her scene, and plays that out. Then any remaining players can choose to take Refresh scenes or involve each other in additional scenes, and at the end, everyone who didn't Refresh throws into a conflict at once to decide the outcomes of all scenes.

Eliminate Promises. I had a thing where you could refresh uses of your Assets by making and fulfilling promises to other players, and refresh your Problems if you broke a promise. But nobody used this feature, and it seemed like it would create more extra bookkeeping than it's worth. This was an outgrowth of the "Aww" Rule, which I really want to put back in, but I think I may need another game to figure out where it'll work.

Fix the checkbox economy. This draft introduced checkboxes that needed to be used to invoke an Asset or Problem, and "XP" boxes toward getting new such traits. But in a game consisting of two rounds--a respectable chunk of gameplay time--we barely had any Assets/Problems get used up or new traits added. Current thought: make uses and points needed equal the number of rounds (normally 2) and allow people to spend Affection to uncheck boxes (because without Promises etc., there's no other way).

Introduce some practice gameplay into the character generation phase. Some story games, most notably Dogs in the Vineyard, use a "warmup" conflict in character creation to help teach the rules and introduce character backstory. I think this would benefit us! My take: a "First Impressions" conflict where each Rival gets to play out how they met (and fell for) the Beloved, and see how it turns out.

Have more Goals. Riffing on the Beloved's Goal worked well at the outset, but it got pretty tired by the end, and it was hard to come up with new spins on it. One player's suggestion: have multiple Goals, each of which comes to a conclusion at the end of one round of play. This should also give the Beloved a bit more agency; ours was a bit of a cardboard cutout (exactly the fear some expressed at our eliminating that GM role...).

Retool the Attribute creation procedure. It wasn't terribly clear that Turn-ons were going to morph into Attributes, so players chose weird things, and the "pairing" process was both clunky and unnecessary. Now: every player makes up a Turn-on, and this set becomes the Rivals' Attributes. You assign numbers counting down from 9 to each of them.

Fix mechanical glitches. Just little things: when do new traits become usable? What happens if, in a conflict, everyone "busts" by playing over their Attribute, meaning no one has a card that can win the conflict?

Improve feedback on the character sheets. Some rules reminders, and different versions for the Competitive vs Friendly game modes, would be really handy.

Get long-term play in order. This is fuzzier, but I think we're getting to the point that individual-session play is solid enough to try a short "series." I'll need to bang out how Goals, Affection, and Situation work in a longer game.

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!

A Cedar Chest of Letters: Playtest Files v0.2

2008-02-29T03:33:09Z

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 Found My Old Diary: Reading/Viewing List Updates

2008-02-28T04:02:23Z

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

El-Hazard: The Magnificent World

Overall impression: Great campy fun. Implausible plot devices, ridiculous villains, fantasy battles: all the good stuff! And I have to give it props for surprising me with the final romantic pairing. There were plenty of clues in retrospect, but I confess my denseness: I didn't see it coming. Scenes that focused on romantic one-upmanship were sparse, but made me grin when they did come up.

Could it be done in Blazing Rose: Sure. I would in fact like to try a game like this at some point, to see how many fantasy tropes, action scenes, etc. you could work in without distracting from the core themes. The main difficulty would be in that one of the Rivals is an antagonistic character, which means you'd have to throw out the conceit that all the Rivals are friends.

To Heart

Overall impression: I don't think I have ever watched a more laid-back show. Like, The Smurfs has more intense conflicts than this. Everything understated, right up to the most chaste "romantic pairing" that's even possible without it being, I dunno, a pen-pal relationship. Also very episodic.

Could it be done in Blazing Rose: Yes, but the players would fall asleep! Most significantly, this is an example of the idea of "Focus Episodes," each potential love-interest being central to a specific episode/session.

Rumbling Hearts

Overall impression: Possibly my favorite from the list, so far--only Suzuka, which I haven't finished, is on a similar level. It does a great job of portraying tragedy, not in the classical sense of futile struggle against ill fortune, but normal people's awfulness: doing the right thing the wrong way, the wrong thing with good intentions, etc. It also pulls off unusually strong depictions of empty kindness (doing nice things for people more because it's emotionally low-cost than out of altruism) and how someone can tell contradictory things to different people and yet mean every word. Plus it's very much about romantic pulls in different directions... and how horribly wrong that can go.

Could it be done in Blazing Rose: Oh, man, I hope so. It's the ultimate example of what a really hard-core Dramatic Friendly game could be like, at least in feel. The story structure would take significant stretching, though. There are only two protagonist-caliber Rivals, and one of them is incapacitated for much of the series--it'd take a very good player to pull that off.

*

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.

What I Feel For You Shall Not Die: New Progress at Last

2008-02-27T05:26:40Z

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!

Talking It Out: Lessons from Playtest 1

2007-11-08T01:56:59Z

It's been a few days, and now I'm ready to dive back into it. I'm shooting to have the second revision ready by next Tuesday night, so I can run a second playtest with my group there. The faster my turnaround, the tighter a playtest/revision cycle I can achieve, meaning the faster I approach completion of this phase of development!

Overview of the first playtest: We ran a Comedic, Competitive game, with four Rivals. The genre was realistic, though open to occasional fantastic elements if it would add to the zaniness. It was set in the 1970's on an unnamed Midwestern college campus. The Beloved was an art professor, and the Rivals were students of his, hoping to join him for a whirlwind tour of romance and art shows after the end of the semester.

Here's ten takeaways from the game, which I intend to address in the next revision.

We don't need a GM. Having the Beloved as a separate player was unnecessary, even detrimental at times. Players tended to dictate his actions via their Hopes for the scene, and when he managed to win narrative control, it felt unfair: my choices of card play could influence who won and lost, arbitrarily. Moreover, I never threw Problem cards as Beloved, since the players did a fine job hosing each other without my intervention.

The Hopes need mechanical weight. While players initially dove into the Hopes with some enthusiasm, that enthusiasm ran out as scenes rolled along. It began to feel like a procedural obligation without any particular importance, because a) they had no bearing on the all-important Affection, and b) Hopes and their effects tended not to carry forward from scene to scene.

The Beloved's traits also need mechanical weight. Players agreed that establishing Likes, Dislikes, and Goals for the Beloved was fun and useful in establishing buy-in, but they seldom actually came up in-game because there was no incentive to use them.

The "Aww" Rule should operate on some other economy than Affection. People saw the benefit of rewarding a player for bringing the awesome, but since agreeing to hand out an Affection point meant giving away a bit of your chance at winning, there was heavy incentive to dig in one's heels and veto it. It led to a grudging feeling that entirely undercut the rule's intent. On a related note, we need a time to invoke the rule, procedurally: it was often forgotten.

There needs to be a tiebreaker option for endings. We ended the game with everyone tied in Affection, resulting in a polyamorous epilogue. This was more disappointing than amusing, because people had bought into the competitive spirit: few things let the wind out of hard-playing sport than "everybody wins, there are no losers."

Hand size and discarding opportunities should be toned down. With no incentive to play or hold on to bad cards, and lots of chances to fish for usable ones, there were no significant choices to be made regarding the cards. You just tossed down your best playable card and ditched the rest. I think we had someone "bust" only once.

Winning high card shouldn't grant both card assignment and narration rights. We often drifted into a procedure where the winner assigned the card, but the person to whom it was assigned narrated how it happened. That tended to work much better, keeping players involved.

We should limit how often Assets and Problems can be brought to bear. Broadly applicable traits came into play time and again, while those of narrower focus seldom if ever saw use. Some means of exhausting these traits would force players to look to underused themes.

Asset/Problem play needs timing rules. Sometimes knowing whether or not your opponent was going to hose you affected strategy. But with no means of determining who had to go first, this led to staredowns where only an arbitrary "time's up" from the Beloved player brought the conflict to a close.

Attributes should be rewritten. They felt clumsy for a number of reasons: (1) Some were vastly more useful than others, due to the nature of the setting and Beloved we'd devised. Empathy or Allure came out about every other scene, while Physique was never used. (2) Overlap was difficult to adjudicate, such as Mind vs. Senses. (3) The variety of actions narrated in a scene didn't lend itself to everything falling under a single Attribute umbrella. (4) Minmaxing was rewarded: the benefits of a very high attribute much outweighed the drawbacks of having a low attribute paired with it.

Along with a little bit of general tweaking and streamlining, attacking these should make for a very solid second draft!

Watched from the viewing list: Love Hina. I have yet to watch the movies, but the story wrapped pretty well in the show, so I'm in no hurry. I can't say it fits the Blazing Rose mold very well, as the vying for attention was pretty halfhearted overall, but it was quite a bit of fun.

I tried watching Ai Yori Aoshi, but argh. People's eyes should not look concave, for crying out loud. Add a totally spineless, antifeminist heroine, and attempts at humor that only disrupt the emotional mood of the story... I'll pass for now.

Played from the reading list: Shooting the Moon. That and Blazing Rose tread a lot of the same ground, no mistaking it. Even several of the fixes I have in mind for the above issues in the playtest are leading in similar directions. I'll need to give it a careful read and make sure to lean hard on the points of differentiation.

First Date: One Playtest Down, Many to Go

2007-11-05T05:38:36Z

Wow.

That was the best playtest I could possibly have hoped for: people both had fun and came back with metric tons of constructive criticism. Huge thanks to tener_duende, rosebudkb, d_hosterman, and Sarah for their committed play and excellent feedback!

Though late (the playtest itself was delayed three days for scheduling concerns), here are the playtest documents, as promised. Since I knew going in that this would be a one-shot, none of the campaign play rules are fleshed out. There are other missing pieces as well, and it's pretty much a dump from my head to paper: I make no claim that you could figure out how to play based strictly on these artifacts. But if you're curious what we had to go on for this first run, here you are:

The playtest rules document - This is almost a straight export from SuperNoteCard, so some headings and such may look a little odd. But the important parts are there and in a coherent order.
Rival character sheet
Beloved character sheet
Series creation sheet
NPC record sheet

At the moment, I'm suffering from information overload, so I can't comment on the playtest itself much. Later in the week, perhaps! I will point out for jnutley's sake, though, that we did in fact run a batch of students seeking the companionship of their teacher. ^.^ (It was collegiate rather than high school, but still.)

I Have Wonderful News: More Updates

2007-10-29T00:09:12Z

Work on the playtest document proceeds apace. It's hard work! So much of what's transpired in these blog conversations doesn't copy over easily, or is deeply internalized in my mind and needs considerable unpacking to make it intelligible to others. But I'll soldier ahead, and you'll see what I have so far when Thursday rolls around! Let me recommend SuperNoteCard, it's a great way to organize your thoughts on a project like this.

One further announcement: I have lined up my first artist for the book! Bex Meyerson of ConceptJanus will produce an inside-cover image (or frontispiece; layout is hazy right now) and possibly also a game logo for Blazing Rose. Thanks, Bex, and welcome aboard! Visit her studio's site and send her inspiring thoughts!

A Letter from Across the Sea: Update

2007-10-27T06:53:52Z

This blog has been quiet for a few days, and for that I apologize!

But the good news is this: I have lined up my first alpha playtest for Thursday of this coming week, with between one and three more coming up a little later on. This means that the next few days will be a fury of outlining and drafting!

Since I'm "designing in the open," as they say, I will make a link to the playtest document available as soon as it's done. I won't promise it'll be intelligible until I get to the beta stage, which likely won't be until early 2008, but it should be worth flipping through and critiquing.

I am excited!

There's maybe three missing pieces I don't feel quite ready to address in the playtest document:

- The Favor scheme is a little wonky for the current KISS-minded design ethos. It shouldn't be terribly difficult to just slap down something equally minimalist, and the first playtest will be a one-shot anyway, but it deserves some thought.

- On a related note, how do we swing Focus episodes? Greater Favor gain, okay, but what else? Stronger scene-framing powers? Intro/outtro spotlight time? Mere fuzzy "try to focus on the Problems of the Rival whose episode it is"?

- Structure for creating the setting and Beloved. Hrm, maybe I can get ahold of a copy of Shooting the Moon post-haste.

I'm hoping things will come to me as I write, but suggestions are, as always, welcome!

I'd Buy You a Green Dress: Economies

2007-10-22T05:21:00Z

(Not kidding: The moment I started writing this entry, MC Frontalot's Romantic Cheapskate came up on my playlist shuffle...)

Though I can't find the specific post at the moment, Graham W of Story Games recently pointed out that any sort of economy is really hard to do right in an RPG. Whether it's tokens, cards, or something more abstract, any quantity that shifts and changes and moves back and forth among the players introduces a host of variables that can be really difficult to design for.

And guess what? Blazing Rose has two. Three or even four, if you stretch your thinking a bit. This is the second issue I need to rough out before I can take to writing up a playtest draft. I'll bang out some ideas here, get your feedback, and then it's time for what the S-G folks called (and again, I can't find the actual post) "mechanical playtesting": me hovering over a table with cards and tokens, playing the pure system like some demented game of solitaire, seeing if things flow sensibly.

Economy 1: Affection

The central economy of the game. These determine winners and losers of a given episode, and move around the table as players take part in conflict scenes. Goals: (1) They should fluctuate frequently, both up and down, for each player. (2) An episode should generally end with more Affection on the table than it began with. (3) They should be valuable or scarce enough that a shift of +/- 1 feels signficant as reward or punishment, but plentiful enough that ties are rare.

Here's my sketch of how we might set them up:

Each Rival starts an episode with 3. The GM also has an amount equal to the number of Rivals for use in bidding.
Gain 1 for discarding a card in an Affirmation scene.
GM can award or subtract one per Rival per scene. Criteria: (+) The player made a contribution that got an emotional reaction out of the group, in keeping with the tone decided upon when setting up the game. (-) The Rival directly attacked or sabotaged another Rival, or otherwise undermined the the conceit that the Rivals are all friends.
The winner of the scene auction spends a number of points equal to the high bid.
An amount equal to the number of Rivals can be won in a minor conflict scene.
An amount equal to the number of Rivals plus the high bid can be won in a major conflict scene.
Lose 1 if a Spade is played on you in a minor conflict scene. Lose 2 if a Spade is played on you in a major conflict scene.

I feel like this is pretty solid overall, but I'm shakiest on the "pot" for conflict scenes. It seems like that'd be an awful lot, but how else might I do it such that it's actually worth bidding points on the scene auction?

Favor

Not really an economy, this is a sort of stopgap, a measure set up to gauge victory separate from Affection--so a blowout session doesn't lead to an insurmountable lead. (Though, in the spirit of the prior entry, let me know if you feel this is unnecessary!) They're the campaign-level victory points, as opposed to Affection's chapter/session-level score. No one starts with any. I see them going something like this--in all cases, it's the format "last place/middle/first place," and ties shift downward:

Intro episode: -1/+0/+1
Focus episode, but not yours: -2/+0/+2
Your focus episode: -4/+1/+3
Finale episode: -(difference between your Affection score for this episode and that of the next higher player)/+0/+(difference between your Affection score and that of the next lower player)

I'm not especially happy with how this looks, but I can't put my finger on why, or on what it should be instead. This may be in large part because I'm coming up short trying to think of clear goals for how I want these to behave, the way I can for Affection. I may just need to play with it and see how things tend to go, but suggestions are, as always, very welcome.

Economy 2: Cards

While Affection's central, this economy has more direct impact on gameplay, since players use cards to make things happen. I would like this to have a steady bottom out/top off rhythm to it, like a gas tank. Players can choose to push hard and burn resources, move weakly and conserve, etc... until they must take a break and recover, but give their opposition more to work with in the process (inspired by Agon, that). It might also be cool if there's a way to try to make another Rival use extra cards, as a way of trying to run them out of options before a major scene comes up.

Each player and the GM starts each episode with 5 cards.
Use 1 card to gain 1 Affection in an Affirmation scene.
Use 1 card to participate in a conflict scene.
Use 1 card to cause Strife or give Help in a conflict scene.
Draw 1 card after a conflict scene in which you folded or played an NPC.
Draw 1 card if you bring a Trait to bear in a conflict scene.
If you are in a conflict scene and your hand is empty, you must play the top card from the deck. You may fold as normal.
Discard any number of cards and draw back up to 5 in a Refresh scene. The GM draws 1 card per Rival participating.

Various assorted thoughts and questions, here.

Is 5 a good hand size? I wavered between that and 6; maybe even something else, though?
I went with Affection gain instead of card drawing for the "aww" rule because, in light of these various ways to draw cards, picking one up felt like too weak a reward.
Toward the end of "make another Rival use extra cards" mentioned above, should there be a way to counteract the use of Strife (or Help?) by burning a card? Maybe one of higher value or opposite color?
I ditched the idea of card trading, for now. While conceptually nifty, I couldn't think of a way to do it that wouldn't distract from the flow of the game. And it would be of limited usefulness anyway.
Is it all just too fiddly? Would the game be better served without a particular economy of cards, instead drawing a hand of cards at the start of each conflict?

Economy 3: Scenes

Though not as involved as the other economies, the ebb and flow of scenes is the context within which the other economies thrive. Indeed, without nailing down what a "scene" is, most of the rules for manipulating cards and Affection fall apart. I would like, by this, to make a rhythm of tension, up and down but always escalating overall, such as you might see in a TV show or anime--a loose mechanical version of the three-act structure, perhaps. Much fuzzier, as it depends on factors well outside the scope of the economy design: I'd like an episode to take 2-3 hours, such that you could do 1-2 episodes in the time slot of your typical RPG session.

An episode has four parts, each consisting of two minor scenes per Rival and one major conflict scene.
Minor scene requests go round-robin, in order as ideas prompt, until all players have had or declined theirs.
Minor scenes can be conflict scenes, Affirmation scenes, Refresh scenes, or Color scenes (no mechanical effect). If more than one Rival participates in a Refresh scene, it counts as a scene for each of them.
The person requesting a minor conflict scene gets to choose what Rivals are involved, and if the Beloved is present.
Major conflict scenes involve the whole group, set up collaboratively.
Players may request Color scenes (but no other type) after the final conflict scene of an episode as denouement, up to 1 per Rival.

Thoughts here:

Do we need a more structured turn order, or a way of handling who goes first if two people both have scene ideas and want to go? There's a definite advantage to getting to run your Refresh scene before somebody drags you into a conflict. I left it this way so one scene could flow organically into the next--follow-up conflicts are a cool thing. Maybe we could roll scene requests into the auction process for choosing arena of conflict? Thoughts?
Does the GM also have the ability to request minor scenes, or need he suggest something and see if a player runs with it?
How the heck would a date between a Rival and the Beloved work? You'd think it'd be a major scene, but I have no clue how to swing that under a structure like this.
Do different kinds of episodes have different structures? What the heck does a focus episode do besides put more Favor points on the line, anyway?
Again: too fiddly? I could see scrapping everything but the different types of scene and just letting it flow, but you do still need a way to pace and conclude the episode lest the Affection tug-of-war drag on indefinitely. Ooh! What if all players, including GM, took turns requesting scenes, and either the GM is the only one who can request a major scene, or he has the option of upgrading any minor conflict to a major one... and after four (?) of those, the episode concludes? Something like that?

Man, I thought I had a pretty good handle on this, then I started writing it down and it got all muddy. That's, like, the opposite of what happened when I did the NPCs entry. -.-