Monthly Archives: November 2014

Milestone

I just wanted to commemorate this occasion of reaching an important first milestone in this blog's career.  I just moderated my first spambot comment.  Looks like I've made it!

A bit more about Paranoia

Yesterday I mentioned the Paranoia reboot, which is crowdfunding on Kickstarter until December 3, 2014.  If you're interested in learning more about the new incarnation of the game, there's an interview on RPG.net with the three designers working on the reboot: James Wallis, Grant Howitt, and Paul Dean.  There's a bit of background on the designers and their interest in Paranoia, but there's also more now about the new system, which as far as I knew was to be more streamlined and involve cards.  That's...pretty much what they say in the interview, too, but with a little more detail.  (In a nutshell: yes, there are cards; no, there are not only cards.)

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Crowdfunding Opportunities

We've spent a few days looking in at part of the RPG design process.  After the design is done, though, comes the production.  I'm a big fan of the rise of crowdfunding as a way to launch endeavors, and no projects excite me more, of course, than RPGs.  There's just something real and satisfying to me about this purest expression of "voting with your dollars."  Not only can I show my support for the projects and creators that I enjoy, but I get to be part of the shared experience of fanhood.  When I am a consumer, I like to be an enthusiastic one when I can.  These are meaningful purchases to me -- not just another doodad, but something I'm genuinely excited about.  And not only that, but I get to be a part of the realization of someone else's goal, a part of someone's success.  The financial support is important, but as far as that goes, it pretty much amounts to putting in a pre-order.  The crowdfunding process, though, the experience of it, also adds a social aspect to the transaction, an aspect of community.  Plus it also feels good to be the first on your block with the new hotness.  Maybe you even get your name in a book.  Below are a few RPGs that are currently funding, as of this posting, roughly in order of amount of time left before the funding campaign closes.

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Metatopia 2014 Report – Summary

Well, everyone, thank you for joining me for this inaugural miniseries of blog posts recounting my experiences at this year's Metatopia.  For this final (and much shorter) installment, I thought I'd collect and summarize the other posts, and wrap up with a few additional thoughts and highlights that weren't in the first parts.

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Metatopia 2014 Report – Part 3

This is a continuation of my convention report for Metatopia 2014 (Part 1; Part 2).  Disclaimer (again): The games mentioned here are currently in development, and so everything I describe about them is subject to change.  It also means that as of this writing, none of them are yet on the market.  If anything here interests you, I highly recommend that you keep an eye on the designers' media outlets to keep up-to-date with the latest news.

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Metatopia 2014 Report – Part 2

This is a continuation of my convention report for Metatopia 2014.  (See Part 1 for more general thoughts about the con.)  While Part 1 covered the people and games that I had particularly set out to see, Parts 2 and 3 will cover the designers I met for the first time and the games I hadn't known about prior to the convention.

Disclaimer (again): It bears repeating that the games mentioned here are currently in development, and so everything I describe about them is subject to change.  It also means that as of this writing, none of them are yet on the market.  If anything here interests you, I highly recommend that you keep an eye on the designers' media outlets to keep up-to-date with the latest news.

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Metatopia 2014 Report – Part 1

Beginnings are always a challenge, and I'd been thinking a lot on what would be an appropriate way to start off this blog.  I've been into tabletop role-playing games since the mid-80s, and while it's been some number of years since my gaming heyday, I like to think that even without regular games to attend that I've been doing a decent job of keeping up with developments in the hobby.  More recently, though (say, in the past few years), the explosion of small-press games and narrative-focused systems have thoroughly reinvigorated my interest, and my somewhat reluctant attempts to get involved in more social media have connected me with game designers, industry professionals, and other fans in a way that I have found to be extremely cool.  The culmination of all these changes came to a head last week in my attendance of this year's Metatopia, a gaming convention geared toward designers and the projects that they are currently developing.  What I want to do for this report (and hopefully more reports to come!) is go over some highlights of the games I played and other experiences I enjoyed.

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