Tiny Teddies Go To War rules (ruleset)

By popular demand, here's the ruleset to play edible wargame Tiny Teddies Go To War as played at PAX Aus. (EDIT: I've been having a bit of trouble making the link work, but it should be fine now.)

I would like to point out that these rules are different to those played the previous year as the game should constantly change. There is no one way to play and everyone who has run it before has used different rules.

Nevertheless, if you want a starting point or are just too busy to make your own rules then you are more than welcome to give these ones a whirl.

For those of you interested in the rules for Rocky Road Warriors or Entree Invaders, rest assured that they will be coming soon.

PAX Aus 2015 and edible wargames (sampler)

I'm in the middle of a weekend at PAX Aus running edible wargames and having a blast. If you yourself are reading this after having met me today, Hi! I had a load of fun today and hope you did too.

I had a lot of people asking where they can get the rules for Tiny Teddies Go To War, Entree Invaders, and Rocky Road Warriors so I've directed them/you here so you have somewhere to look for them when I put them up after the weekend is over.

In the meantime, last year's rules can be found here, but I think that this year's ruleset is much improved since then.

Regardless, there's nothing stopping you from whipping up a set of silly rules and giving it a try yourself. That's what many other people before me have done and I hope you do it too.

I'd love to play your version.

Which #threeforged finalist will be the winner?

The public voted and the top five threeforged games have been decided. The judges will be assessing them and deciding on a winner by the end of this weekend. So this is the last chance really to discuss them before anonymity is lifted.

The selection is interesting and a little surprising, which is to be expected from the voting method. I’m not sure how many other people read all 102 games before voting but I think I’m probably in the minority. There were some games that I totally expected to see represented that haven’t made it (Conspiracy and Cowards comes to mind) and the final selection is not what I would have banked on. Nevertheless, all five finalists are good products and worth assessing on their own merits.

But of the five, which should win?

Or more importantly, which ones won’t?

Anthill – The Outsider

Of the five finalists, Anthill is the one I’m most surprised to see reach this far. I think I can see why it did, though. Post-apocalyptic settings are very popular at the moment and focusing on a mutating ant colony is a refreshing perspective on a genre that could quickly play itself out. The focus on protecting the Hill (and the colony) provides fertile ground for good stories and the method for location construction looks like fun.

The PC statistics are ant-appropriate and the character sheet layout is elegant. The list of mutations is comprehensive and the game is largely ready to play. Maybe a sample adventure or a list of threats (ant-agonists?) could have been included, but these are minor oversights.

So it’s clean, elegant, simple and interesting. Great.

But it won’t win, and the major reason is the system. Anthill uses a task-based percentile system that feels archaic and uninspired when compared to modern gaming design, and particularly when compared against the other four finalists. Furthermore, there’s no real reason to have a percentile system here. Increments occur in 5% steps, meaning a d20 roll could do the same job and probably do it better. Anthill feels like it’s stuck in the ‘80s.

Anthill also suffers from an escalation problem. Simply rolling a skill (successful or not) puts you one quarter of the way to improving it, which feels like short-sightedness on the designers’ part. But I doubt it would be a huge problem as I don’t think many games of Anthill would last further than the three-session mark at most.

It isn’t that it’s a bad system. For what it is it’s balanced and clear. You always know what you should be rolling and you won’t get lost. It’s functional and polished. It isn’t broken in any way, and that’s possibly a saving grace. The other games in the top five don’t have as clear a system and it could gain traction on that.

But it’s boring. It doesn’t challenge you or add anything new and interesting. Anthill might have a great idea but it misses out on making it about the best parts of setting. Pheromone communication and the caste system are briefly mentioned and I’d love it if it was a game that took Automaton’s approach, encouraging you to act in certain ways because of the hive-mind or marking areas to affect the behavior of NPC ants. That would have been awesome.

But Anthill missed that opportunity. And it’ll miss out on first place, mainly because it needs a more interesting narrative core mechanic to elevate it above its competitors.

Last Year’s Magic – The Party Game

There were a lot of wizardly “Potter” games. There were a few party games. There were a decent amount of performance-based games. Last Year’s Magic trumped in each category.

It’s such a fun pitch! You play grumpy old wizards sitting in a pub arguing about magic; what spell to cast and which ingredient would be best in Grumblybum’s Elixir and whether eye of newt is really necessary if you’re adding that much wing of bat. It’s silly clean fun and so very accessible. It begs for props such as pipes and tankards and fake beards. If you’ve got a fireplace and candles you’d be remiss not to light them up.

Characterisation is key to Last Year’s Magic and as you read it you can’t help but giggle and think how cool it would be to be in full swing playing this. You can imagine your mates jumping into character and firing off witty banter all with a couple of mulled wines and hearty ales to get the creative juices flowing.

There’s even a great little character creation mechanic to warm you up where you interpret a playing card to decide on what kind of wizard you are, which is awesome because it also introduces you to the idea of the cards and suits and their connection to fields of magic. It’s leading you in to the system to come. And it feels fun and vibrant and it’s helping you roleplay and not getting in the way.

But then it does get in the way. And all the cool imagery about the witty banter and funny characters gets a bit lost as you try to maneuver around it.

Last Year’s Magic falls for the same problem as many of the other performance and party games in the competition did (I’m looking at Ad Libitum Absurdity, It Is Forbidden, Mixtapes and Mistakes, Psychic Detective Agency, and State Cinema among others). And that problem is that at the most critical, interesting and exciting moment of the roleplaying the system stops you to check something. It’s like someone’s grandmother popping in to check if everyone’s okay and then it’s hard to get back in the groove because you’re afraid that you made too much noise last time and you’ve got to tone down because you might interrupt her knitting.

And that’s not what Last Year’s Magic is about. It’s about guffaws of laughter and witty asides and in-jokes and sheer uproarious nonsense. For that you need a system that inspires and assists that and then lets you loose to play. And it should be something simple likes props and pipes and tavern stuff. Maybe magical ingredients or spell tomes or even the way you drink your beer or whatever. You could have magic backfire forcing you to drink from the other side of the cup or dance a jig whenever somebody says “cummerbund” or something.

And that’s why Last Year’s Magic won’t win; because it has so much charm and possibility and then drops the ball. The base mechanic is simple enough and has a nice idea, but when you read it you can’t help but say, “I’d change that.”

Which is fine! That’s totally in the spirit of Threeforge. You could even call this game the spiritual winner of the contest in that regard because it gives you something not quite ready that you know you can turn into a brilliant night of entertainment in about 1000 words and a bit of tweaking.

But the judges will be looking for a finished game with a system that supports the gameplay. And Last Year’s Magic gets outclassed by its competition. Where Anthill’s system is boring, Last Year’s Magic’s system is just plain distracting.

Children's Radio Hour - The Gauntlet

It’s no surprise to see Children’s Radio Hour among the finalists. It’s a great game and the concept of a radio show suits the style of tabletop roleplaying so well (I wish I’d considered the connection long ago). It has a one-hour format and encourages- nay, enforces roleplaying in its structure.

And it looks so damn professional, too. It’s like a boardgame where you print out booklets and give them to the players and each of these booklets contains all the rules you need. It has checkboxes for you to track your goals and bold letters to define game terms. Whenever you need to know what to do when, say, you draw a Thing card, you just look on your sheet and it’s right there with clear instructions as to what to do.

Everyone has different agendas and can reward other people for roleplaying in a fun way, but the pressure is on to perform because if you break character or fail to keep things interested you can get Dead Air tokens which can screw your show. You can even get cancelled, which is a great idea, forcing you to work together to make a story no matter how much you fail at your personal goals.

It’s a great, great game with clean, crisp design and it’s ready to play.

But are you up for it? Are you even up TO it?

You have to seriously ask it because Children’s Radio Hour is incredibly intimidating. It runs over an hour with set periods two to three minutes in length where you have to roleplay entirely in character. Which doesn’t sound so bad; it sounds challenging but fun. But once you’ve agreed to that all of these other factors come into play, like writing on cards and introducing elements for kids you know in the audience and did that guy just mention a unicorn because I want that in the story so I need to pass him a chip but let me just check because it might have been a different kid and OH SHIT IT’S MY LINE but I missed the question and I’m stammering like a bloody idiot and I’M GOING TO BREAK THE GAME!

Children’s Radio Hour is like some kind of dare for people to prove their roleplaying cred. You sit down, start the clock and see how far you can get before someone screws it all up. Or a dodgy TV show where you all get thrown into a shark pool and your job is to desperately tread water and hope that someone gets chomped before you do. It raises an eyebrow and asks if your group is really good enough to play it and then says, “I didn’t think so,” when you fuck it up.

There’ll be so many times where you screw up and you just hate yourself for it because you’re letting everyone down, and other people will flounder and you’ll wince and watch them die in front of you in ego-crushing gamer shame. It builds disappointment in yourself and resentment for your friends.

That’s not what you want out of a roleplaying session. You want to build something together with friends, not afraid of being involved because you might become the guy everyone remembers as the one who couldn’t think up a rhyme for “hopscotch”. VHS Fury and State Cinema both dealt with similar concepts to CRH and they never fostered such a critical experience.

And though Children’s Radio Hour won’t win, it won’t care. It’ll take another puff on its elegant cigarette stem, toss its beret haughtily and mutter that genius is never truly appreciated. If a group ever manages to play a full hour it’ll probably break down and cry.

The Rending of the Veil - The Shiny One

So Anthill won’t win. Last Year’s Magic won’t win either and nor will Children’s Radio Hour. So which one CAN win it?

Well, The Rending of the Veil can. It’s got a good shot.

The first thing you notice about this game is the stunning photography on the front page, but the rest of the game is equally well-designed. The first couple of pages explore the setting and the writing is great. It draws you into this science-fantasy blend and lets you know the high stakes involved in the story you’ll be playing in. And then it hits you with the whammy; your characters will be uber-powerful entities trying to save it.

This game basically lets you play Gandalf or Merlin, a being of incredible power trying to goad humanity into defending itself from a terrible evil. Your abilities are so powerful that you’ll try to find the subtlest ways to use them. And then at certain moments you’ll toss aside your cloak and reveal your true majesty, performing legendary deeds hardly understandable to mortal men.

There were a few other games that allowed nigh-boundless reality-shaping (most of them cyber in genre) and where they all failed was that they gave all this power and freedom and didn’t offer any constraints to give direction.

The Rending of the Veil succeeded by offering a world to play in, and what a great world it is. Not only is there the introductory history but there’s also a map (there were so few maps in the contest!) and it looks really awesome. But the map is not just a bit of flavor, it’s a storytelling tool. You drop dice on it and where they land tells you what plots are going on there or whether Winter has seized it. And you wander from town to city to ancient ruin trying to prevent Winter, rallying noble men and women to your cause.

It’s so much fun, and it doesn’t matter that it’s a little incomplete. It stands well enough that you can plug it onto another system if you need to. Or you can just spend a night treating it like a board game.

And if (just if) The Rending of the Veil doesn’t win it might be for that reason. Is it really a roleplaying game? There were a number of games in the contest that seemed closer to board games or card games or deck construction games than roleplays and some people might resent the “board-gaminess” of The Rending of the Veil. But I don’t care as long as it’s good, which this is.

Of the five finalists, this was the only one in my own top five (fifth, if you’re asking). So it would make sense for me to think it will be the winner. And it very well may be.

But I’m betting on…

Field Work - The Charmer

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Field Work will be the winner of Threeforged (though aren’t we all really the winners of Threeforged, truly?)

It’s so damn funny! The format of a regular working day works well and then it gives it a supernatural twist. And that’s nothing new; there are so many games where you play investigators and troubleshooters in a supernatural setting. Where Field Work shines is that it takes all the tropes of those games and satirizes them.

You’re never in fear of your character’s life, and you don’t need to be. The humour of Field Work is that you might have completely screwed a mission, perilously rammed against a door trying to hold off an office full of brain-bug infected accountants, and you won’t be worried about your life; you’ll be worried about how the boss is really gonna rip you a new one for this and you should really speak with Steve about getting some anti-spellware in Lynux.

The revolving GM mechanic was overplayed in Threeforged but it works here, keeping every player invested and entertained. Everyone gets a spotlight and then you get to roleplay together in lunch and debrief scenes, which are absolutely hilarious.

That’s because the game mechanic is incredibly unbalanced. One player will turn up battered and covered in snailman vomit, complaining about how they literally when through hell this morning, but the next player will say they had it easy with an old lady who simply didn’t have the monitor plugged in and then it was an early lunch.

But that imbalance doesn’t matter! It’s crazy and ridiculous and dumb and that’s exactly what Field Work is; a crazy, ridiculous, dumb world where your character is playing it straight trying to earn a living. It’s sitcom material and it fits the tabletop roleplaying environment perfectly. (There’s another game in Threeforged I think can work beautifully next to Field Work and that’s The Hot Seat. Check it out.)

The flavor text makes you fall in love with this game even before you’re a third of the way through the document  and the character creation questionnaire is simply brilliant. There’s so much good work here. There’s even a list of alternative settings in case your group might not be so IT savvy, and they’re all good suggestions.

But the most telling reason why Field Work will likely win is because it has survived playtest reviews with flying colours. Since the games were released, Field Work seems to have been played more than any other game apart from In A Week of Sharks. But of the reviews I’ve seen, Field Work seems to be the one that plays best in actual play, and I’m not surprised. There’s so much to like about it.

There’s a perfect mix of spotlight mini-adventures and multi-PC freeform, mundane quibbles and completely bonkers disasters. It rewards you for playing a fatalistic old curmudgeon instead of a kick-ass super ninja. You might even have kick-ass super ninjas burst into the room right while you’re in the middle of an important download and you need to fend them off only with the knowledge that they’re violating six electrical safety standards. Who doesn’t want to play that?

It’s fun and exciting and dynamic and it makes you want to play it. And why wouldn’t you? It’s hilarious! It never takes itself seriously and it encourages you not to do so either. And for all of that it’s quite clever and professional. It’s neat, without going overboard on graphic design.

I didn’t actually rate Field Work highest of these games when I did my reviews. I rated it eleventh (you can read my reviews in earlier entries). But I have to look at all of them in a different light when you compare them only to each other.

And when you look at them together you end up asking a good question; which one of these games do I most want to play? To which Field Work stands up and says “Here I am!” (possibly pushing Last Year’s Magic back in its seat while doing so).

There’s no arguing with it; it’s just so delightfully charming. It has to win. 

#Threeforged countdown 20 to 1

Well, the Threeforged RPG contest is accepting votes up until midnight on Sunday. I've shortlisted my top 20, but now it's time to put them in order and work out the five I'm voting for.

I've got to confess it's a hard decision. There's been so many excellent submissions and picking favourites means looking for niggly faults in otherwise great games.

I've had to decide that the games I'll vote for are based on personal preference. In other words, they'll be MY top games. I'll try to justify my decisions in the write-ups.

I'll be voting for the top 5 in the order presented below.

(One note: For a long time I was conflicted over whether I could allow myself to review the games that I worked on. Eventually, I decided that I could at the very least review the work of the other designers who contributed to them. I feel a lot happier doing that. Nevertheless, it's only fair to say that one of the games I worked on hit my top 20. As anonymity goes, I won't reveal it, but I also feel obliged to inform the reader that it is not in my top 5, and thus I won't be voting for it.)

20: Transmission
This game has a brilliant setup where the group creates the transmissions from a lost colony. Sadly, investigating the site is not as interesting mainly due to the fact that the framework becomes virtually non-existent. I would have liked more tools to handle this, and the optional conlict rules at the end were an excellent first start. It should also be noted that Transmission is a very simple text document, proving that a good game doesn't have to look flashy.

19: Tales on the Weird Seas
Of all the games in the competition, this is the only one to feel like the designers have opted for a classic Old School approach. Character classes, monster statistics, levelling up, it's all there. The anthropomorphic boat concept is adorable and the theme permeates the document. Sadly, you would discard the system and replace it with something else. 4000 words is a challenge for OSR.

18: The Red Token
There have been a few games that have tackled difficult territory and The Red Token does it best (it doesn't fall for the setting traps that Platonic Mastery did). It explores the nature of redemption and rehabilitation and confronts the player with having to sympathise with a dislikeable protagonist. I applaud the designers for their courage and maturity, even though there is indeed the possibility to run a darkly comedic version of this game. Though the central card mechanic is uninspiring, The "token" mechanic is much better.

17: It Is Forbidden
There are a good number of party games in the competition and many fall for the same problem; their system tends to interrupt the most exciting moments of play. To that end, the reader can't help but note that if they played it they would adapt or replace the existing system. It Is Forbidden falls for this trap, but also could benefit from a lighter approach. I think it would be a much better game if it were comedic. Regardless, It Is Forbidden is a great game and has received many positive reviews.

16: Last Year's Magic
This is my favourite game of the "Potter games", even though it isn't particularly Potter as such. I've found that the better games tend to focus on one small environment/situation/scene and do it well, and Last Year's Magic invests itself in its premise. However, I don't think the rules as written are best for this game and a lighter system would improve it. Still, a Potterish game had to make the list and this is my choice.

15: VHS Fury 
I really wanted to represent the more performance-based games high on this list, such as Ad Libitum Absurdity, State Cinema, or Psychic Detective Agency. However I had to go with VHS Fury, even though it doesn't have the performance aspect. I dislike the central card mechanic, but have to confess that the symbolism of suits here is the best in the competition. The different roles encourage and reinforce conflict between players, which I adore. This game just nudged out Children's Radio Hour for representation here, and I think it comes down to the humour.

14: Timelines
There was a lot of Microscope influence in the competition, but my personal favourite is Timelines. Part of the reason is that it has a much tighter, personal focus than many of the more epic settings. The rippling effect of Paradox is nice, but it could do with a little tweaking (an online suggestion was to stop rolling once a timeline stabilised seems like it would do the trick). It would be easy to draw comparisons with If At First You Don't Succeed, which is also great, but Timelines is tighter.

13: Pony Express
Probably one of the games I've raved about most with my friends, Pony Express is full of charm. I've never been a play-by-mail player but I really enjoyed the handful of games that opted for it as a framework. The Fallen Sky used letters well, but Pony Express embraces the idea utterly. I'm a little concerned that it has just filed the numbers off My Little Pony and I'm not sold on the period setting. Nevertheless, Pony Express is a delight.

12: Automaton
The big selling point for Automaton is the Function Flowchart, which restricts your PC in options available to you due to your programming. That alone sold the game for me. Another great mechanic in Automaton is the challenge of beating a rival NPC party to complete your mission, which adds tension and teamwork to the game. However, the system is a little too simple at heart and I particularly dislike the arbitrary nature of difficulty ratings as presented.

11: Field Work
Ah, Field Work! How I enjoy reading you. You've got a hilarious premise, gorgeous fiction pieces, a solid framework for episodic story structure, lovely character generation questionnaires, and a decent escalation mechanic. But the system is discardable, so it just misses out on Top 10 status. All that being said, I love this game.

10: The Dream Palace
This is one of the more experimental and controversial games in the competition. Some would argue against its inclusion for you don't roleplay at all. It's more of a narrative-building exercise where you collaborate with others to establish connections between random experiences you've had during your day. But what I love about The Dream Palace is how it has the potential to change your life. You might never look at your world in the same way by playing this game. Nevertheless, it could have established more tools for us to work with, and an example of play would have been of great assistance.

9: Spiral Star
There were a few larp formats presented in the competition but none are as ready-to-play as Spiral Star. A one-shot freeform, it could be played in the home or at a convention. Handouts are all supplied for printing and it also contains an introductory speech. The game itself is appropriately simplistic, but I'm unsure how the revolving emotion cards will work in practice. Regardless, Spiral Star is a good larp structure and would play well.

8: Among Humans
My favourite of the play-by-mail games because of the sneaky ability to trap people into becoming GMs to your game. In fact, the whole border between player and GM is blurred here, which screws with the way we look at roleplaying. Other reviews have pointed out the Doomed Pilgrim nature of it, and having now read up on it I have to agree, but it does twist it very well. The presentation is flawed, but has its charm. I'm divided between putting it lower or putting it higher, but I'll compromise for somewhere in the middle.

7: At Any Cost
I quickly got sick of "standard deck of cards"-based systems while reading the games. I had a bit more time for games that used custom cards, but looked poorly on those that didn't give me printable sheets. At Any Cost has wonderful cards and also supplies backs for them. It's like 2-player Once Upon A Time, but adds a competitive edge. Not only  is it attractive, but it looks like a load of fun. I'd like to see a professionally packaged version. Some games have been criticised for being closer to board or card games than roleplays, but I welcome them as long as they're good games; At Any Cost is a good game.

6: The Hot Seat
The Hot Seat is a great counterpoint to Field Work and they're easy to compare. The sheer variety in The Hot Seat wins it for me, as does the voting mechanic (which was explored in Bag-Pulling Game, but finds a niche here). The descriptions of the various departments is hilarious and gets the creative juices flowing. I imagine that this game isn't going to get a lot of attention, which is a shame because it has so much going for it. I wonder if you could combine it with Field Work to somehow make one killer game...

5: The Rending of the Veil
Some concerns have been made about the use of images in this submission, but I figure it isn't my place to be discussing the legalities surrounding such things and to merely review the games themselves. And The Rending of the Veil is a very good game. The science-fantasy background is handled well and gives a neat twist on the powerful archmage/demigod concept. The map central to the game is wonderful and its use of a "die drop" mechanic to determine Winter's influence is superb. Forgeborn was another game using a die drop and introduced the whole idea to me, but I think that Rending is a better overall game.

4: Conspiracy and Cowards
As you read through the 103 games in the contest, every now and then you'll read one that really stands out. Conspiracy and Cowards seems to rocket to the top of everyone's list as soon as they read it. C&C set my benchmark for professionalism in the contest and it was rarely matched on that front. I'm a little awkward about the haikus because they don't seem to match the base setting, but it's a nice touch and I like it. Reviews have been very positive and I think it has a good chance of winning the contest.

3: The Policy of Truth
Another game with a tricky premise, The Policy of Truth is a heavy, heavy game. For all that, it's a simple system; it's just that the setting is so dense. But fear not! The designers have supplied maps, timelines, information briefings and lists of names to help you. Even so, you'll find simple tools to help you design missions on the fly. Stylishly, character sheets are designed so you "redact" irrelevant information, adding a touch of the setting to the basic mechanics. The layout and presentation is astounding and the game itself is perfectly structured. Well done.

2: To Return a Wallet
I quickly grew bored with card games whilst reading the games, and dice games were generally simplistic. I was always happy to find an alternative resolution method and I also loved the games that used physical items as important story elements. So I was overjoyed to read To Return A Wallet where random pocket-stuffings became the central focus of the system. Added to that, the philanthropic nature of the quest is a welcome change to the larcenous nature of many roleplaying games. Simple at heart and immensely satisfying.

1: The World As Such
I get the feeling that I might be the only person who will put The World As Such as their number 1 pick.Critics might state that it isn't a game at all and the harshest might even be a little justified in suggesting that the designers were actively trying to troll the contest. But I disagree entirely. The World As Such is a work that smashes down the fence between roleplaying and art and then gleefully tosses you through the gap. It's a riddle wrapped in familiar gaming terms and designs but refuses to help us decipher it. To read it is to play it, and your approach determines your role. Do you read it as a GM, or a player? Designer or reviewer? Like the contest itself, it says, "Here's what we've built. Now what are YOU going to do with it?" But it isn't just random nonsense or laziness. There's a great deal of intelligence and talent that has gone into creating The World As Such and it's a treasure to read. You might hate it. I love it.

You can download the games or find out more here

Highlights of the #Threeforged RPG contest.

Having selected my top 20 of the 103 Threeforged games, I now have to work out the five I'll vote for. But first I think it's time to look back over them and discuss some of my favourite moments.

<Handy links: games can be found here, my short reviews of all 103 games can be found here >

Now it a few reviewers have noted that there are a number of Harry Potter games. Wizarding is a straight up rpg with the Potter serial numbers filed off, whilst Double Potions (currently the most downloaded game) surpasses it by narrowing in to one particular class. Personally I prefer Apprentice Wizard Familiar to either, where you communally play one student and get to interact as his/her familiars. Even so, the best Potter game in my opinion is closer to Terry Pratchett in tone, and that's Last Year's Magic. There's something about bumbling drunk wizards and ridiculous spells that I love.

But though magical high schools were popular so were their mundane counterpoints. Yearbooks in Disgrace goes for a light entertainment vibe whilst High Velocity Times at Space High went for silly. But it was the beautiful Mixtapes and Mistakes that really excited me including a wonderful risk mechanic and a performance style interrogation at the end, though I disliked smash-cutting.

That seems to be a bit of a common fault for the performance/theatre sport games. It's detrimental to your play to have a system that interrupts the scene. It's a pity because a number of these games have brilliant concepts. I love Ad Libitum Absurdity's idea to have non-spotlight characters working only on their secondary goals whilst not commanding the scene. State Cinema's propaganda kaiju and VHS Fury's B-grade variety are both hilarious but are let down by clumsy mechanics. Psychic Detective Agency has constant out-of-character talk, whilst Children's Radio Hour counters the whole problem by introducing set in-character time limits. King of Bones has probably the simplest setting, but the musical system needs work and is really intimidating. Nevertheless, as much as I love all of these ideas I couldn't help but feel that I wouldn't use the mechanics as they are. I'd definitely use the settings.

On a similar note, there are a few big party games that also need work. In A Week of Sharks is great, but the mechanics need more work. On the other hand, It Is Forbidden needs to be streamlined down to fully become accessible. 

I've never been a play by mail player but a few of these games have converted me. Fallen Sky has an awesome letters from home system that overshadows the rest of the game. Pony Express takes it a step further, and if you told me last week that one of my favourite games in the contest is about rainbow unicorn friends who send letters to each other I would have laughed. Among Humans twists Doomed Pilgrim in its own macabre direction and presents itself well.

On the note of presentation, there are some really pretty games. Conspiracy and Cowards is such a professional-looking product and The Rending of the Veil includes a hand-drawn map among its many other attractive design features. But by far the award for prettiest game goes to Gho5t. So pretty in fact that you just can't help but be suspicious that Gho5t is style over substance.

Cards are big at the moment. Microscope-style index cards find interesting twists in If At First You Don't Succeed, Millennia and Timelines. I like them all a lot, but the index thing is leaving me cold at the moment.

Standard playing cards get a lot of use and for the most part are serviceable. The Prophet's Price and The Quantum Haruspex opt instead for Tarot cards but sadly fail to exploit the possibilities. A few games have gone for custom cards, which is fine, but Hound/ed and Zen Flashback Battle Zero sinned mightily in not supplying printable cards to make it easy. At Any Cost, It Is Forbidden and No Myth were much more organised and so trump the lazy ones. Like no giving me character sheets. Sheesh!

Speaking of character sheets, I love the idea of blacking out details on your CIA character sheet in The Policy of Truth. Automaton has an excellent flowchart of programmed options on its sheet. Connections with other characters were often emphasised but none quite so simply as The Reunion which symbolised connections with physical objects at the table. The tactile nature was further explored with To Return A Wallet, where stuff from your pockets can influence gameplay.

There were a lot of mechanics that opened my eyes. House of Hades uses dominoes where the length of your chain determines success. Bag Pulling Game gets credit for the bag mechanic, but The Hot Seat does it better. Shinobi Village has you throwing both hands at once in scissors-paper-rock contests (one for attack, one for defense) which totally revolutionises the way I look at "fist-throwing" game systems. Silver Tongues uses puns for duels and double-entendres for seduction attempts. Forgeborn and Under the Broken Moons use a "die-drop" method of map creation which I've never encountered before but now absolutely love! Aquila also has a circle-drawing method to making maps that is equally interesting, but not quite as fun.

Old-school games are difficult to make in 4000 words, but Tales on the Weird Seas did it in seafaring style (one reviewer referred to it as Disney Crawl Classics and that's pretty accurate). But where Weird Seas went with tradition, others went a different direction entirely. 

Langer Memorial Trauma Centre seems to have a standard roleplay design but has a big twist intended to make a political statement. The Dream Palace and The Mask And The Daydream each have more to do with story and concept creation rather than roleplaying and differ from each other in that one is shared and the other is very personal.

But probably the most controversial would be The World As It Is, which I rank very highly. Seen as frivolous, pretentious and foolish by some, I see it as a piece of art. It's the only game where to read it IS to play it and so much talent has gone into the work. In many ways, the approach here would have improved the highly comical MUSCLE WIZARDS VS LAZER DINOSAURS: TURBO VAMPIRE EDITION. MWvLD didn't need a system - it should have lampooned the whole idea. Both of these games were very refreshing for someone reading all 103 games.

Of course, by saying 103 I'm including the enigmatic Agency, which has still yet to appear...

#threforged RPG contest Top 20

<Handy links: games can be found here, my short reviews of all 103 games can be found here >

If you don't know which games you'd like to check out to read for the Threeforged RPG Competition, why not select some from my Top 20?

I narrowed down all 103 into the 20 that I think are the best and most complete overall products. The groupings are pretty loose.

• Collaborative storytelling - Automaton, Field Work, Tales on the Weird Seas, The Rending of the Veil, Timelines.
• Inter-player conflict - At Any Cost, It Is Forbidden, Last Year's Magic, The Hot Seat, VHS Fury.
• 1 session set pieces - Conspiracy and Cowards, Spiral Star, The Policy of Truth, The Red Token, Transmission.
• Out of the ordinary - Among Humans, Pony Express, The Dream Palace, The World As Such, To Return a Wallet

Some Thoughts

There's a certain familiarity to a lot of these games. Not so much in the system but in the necessity to make certain things clear.

Fortunately nearly all designers have assumed that the reader has some kind of history with rpgs, so there's little in the way of "what is gaming?" introductions. But there is sometimes time wasted in informing me of what a GM is and the responsibilities involved.

It isn't so bad when the game has restrictions or special rules for the GM, but having some kind of common standard for writing would go a long way to reducing wasted word-count. If the document has a common reference for GM, designers can say, "this game has a standard GM structure, but we call it a Bookkeeper. Bookkeepers have the following rules different to regular GMs. (elaborate from here)." Or "We use a revolving GM system where the player on your left controls X and the player to your right controls Y."

Another would be "Frame a scene and begin freeform play." So many games are spending words on that one. Unless you're going to give me rules for it I don't want to hear the same generic advice I've read in every document so far.

One that is becoming a clear issue is the issue of triggers, safe words, "X-cards" and the like. I get that it's serious, but ideally I'd prefer if the writer assumed I was aware of the issue and got on with the game. I know, I know, it's an issue we need to talk about, but I'd prefer it to be mentioned in the guidelines once rather than in every other game I read. It also makes it a bit awkward for those designers who did assume a mature audience and thus didn't include such advice; they could be seen as being insensitive and that would be unfair.

Another good inclusion to a reference sheet would be the standard dice abbreviation (2d6, 1d20, etc). Fortunately most people did assume readers had that knowledge.

But one final one is pronouns. Everyone tries hard on this one but there's still some awkwardness. My recommendation for a standard is simple; refer to players as female and characters as male. "Alice wants Brian to climb the wall. She rolls a success and he scrambles up."

If you use the standard there's no need to mention it unless you're shaking it up for some reason.

I don't mean to offend anyone there, because including such detail helps make the game a full product and is actually useful for newer players and maybe the previously ignorant. But maybe we can avoid repetition of basic rpg conventions and concepts by having a game reference document available alongside the submissions.

But what should be included? 

#threeforged RPG contest (even more thoughts)

Games can be found here

My short reviews of all 103 games can be found here

I've just finished reviewing the last game on the list. It's been a bit of a marathon getting through them all, but incredibly rewarding.

The results at the end sit at:
12 meh games
40 OK games
50 Contenders
and one n/a (no download available).

My next step is to reassess the Contenders and decide which 20 will step up into Elite status. I'll select my top five from there.


What you should be looking at

• Collaborative adventures -  Anonym, Automaton, Fear of the Dark, Fetch This!, Field Work, Gho5t, Imperial Measure, Magical Mystery Tour, Tales on the Weird Seas, The Clinic, The Quantum Haruspex, The Rending of the Veil, Timelines
• Could be a board/card game - Aquila, At Any Cost, Forgeborn, Game of the Gods, 
• Performance framework - Ad Libitum Absurdity, Last Year's Magic, Psychic Detective Agency, State Cinema, Ultranormal Encounters
• Interplayer conflict - A Hard Goodbye, Dark Secret, Friends of the Venom Spider, If at first you don't succeed, It Is Forbidden, Mixtapes and Mistakes, Space Problems argh, The Hot Seat, The Perfected City, VHS Fury.
• One session set-pieces - Conspiracy and Cowards, Life As It Was, Children's Radio Hour, Millennia, Spiral Star, The Policy of Truth, The Red Token, The Reunion, Transmission
• Different approaches - Among Humans, Fallen Sky, House of Hades, Langer Memorial Trauma Centre, Pony Express, The Dream Palace, The World As Such, To Return a Wallet

Don't be put off a game just because I haven't raised it to Contender. Some of my favourite moments and mechanics were in games of OK or meh rating.

One of my key criteria for deciding if a game makes it to Elite status is if it's a complete product. There are a lot of Contenders which aren't quite as finished or polished as they need to be to be at the top of the class, so that will be the first thing I'll look at.

But not right now. right now I'm gonna take a nap.