A Neat Discovery...

...and a meandering muse on short games...

One of the funnest things I did when I was making A Random Encounter was make the short games that I did as little print bonuses. Escape The Undermaze and Thursday Night were inspired by Chris McDowall's one-page hack of Into The Odd, and what really appealed to me was this idea of having something complete in just a single-page, where every element that you would need to setup and run a fun, interesting, exciting game was there.

Just add a GM, some players and imagination!!!

...or something...

I've been reflecting on both of those games for a while, as I have some ideas for a collection of games/settings, like an anthology of potential stories. A common system, probably heavily influenced by Into The Odd because it's simple and great, but with double spreads that are like mini-modules. A complete session on two pages. Some tables, some inspiration, but the GM and players make it into an enjoyable evening; hopefully, with seeds and ideas scattered through the stories/games that connect things up an interesting way.

Anyway, that's for a much longer post and another day! I like the simplicity of having just a few simple rules and a couple of tables, and I thought a few days ago, "I wonder if I could really strip that down and make a simple game - maybe for the 200 Word RPG Challenge! Isn't that coming up soon?"

I think it is! Probably, hopefully announcing soon. I decided to "check out the competition" and see what was submitted last year. There were lots of entries, but I clicked on the first title that really jumped out at me...

...and wouldn't you know it, someone has beat me to it. A simple game, a neat structure, several short tables for inspiration, a working - and interesting - system and all in 200 words. Levon Jihanian is a genius.

Seriously, go check out Fuck! It's Dracula. You won't be sorry!

Reflections: Escape The Undermaze

I said at the end of my last post, an AP of my little game Escape The Undermaze, that I was still reflecting and thinking things through, and I still am to some extent. I set out to make a "Minimum Viable Product" version of Into The Odd, complete rules, setting ideas, encounters and locations, plus the motivation for the adventure but all as small as possible. It fits on a single side of A5 (I created a simple "cover" as well) and clocks in at just over 500 words.

Reflections on running it:

• It was fun to take inspiration from encounters the party hadn't met yet (and might never meet), and weave them in to the fiction. So, for example, the big bad is an undead scientist who "wants to perform a living autopsy." When the party found a dead body, I was inspired to have this person be a victim of the creature, even though they might not encounter her: the corpse was found with innards on the outside, but surgically removed and neatly arranged.
• Despite my "complete rules" provocation above, I ended up writing "This game is incomplete, but functional" in the game text, and I stand by that. During play I used luck rolls, changed descriptions of locations and details of encounters simply because they felt appropriate to the unfolding story.
• For the longest time I've had a mini-manifesto idea in my head about resourceful use of items; the thought came one day when looking at the item list in Lamentations of the Flame Princess at all of the non-encumbering items and thinking, "This is like a dungeoneering problem solving tool-kit!" Which is not an original thought, but never mind. For Escape The Undermaze I made 75% of the equipment non-weapon-y, everything from chalk to rope, beer to bread. It was great to see people using a broken bottle and a stick as an improvised spear, using a flute to calm an animal and soap to create a slippery surface.
• I organised the game and setting information in a certain way, and think it's fit for purpose, but also think that if when I do a second edition I'll make the page as an image rather than try typesetting in Open Office. There are seven key pieces of GM rules that are set out, and I'm sure they could be both better worded and better laid out.
• It was a lot of fun to run!

I want to run it again actually. I could possibly be tempted to try and run it over Hangouts in the near future... It's currently only available in print as a bonus to Issue 2 of A Random Encounter, but I'm wondering about making it more widely available in pdf. If you've seen it - as a print purchaser or contributor - what do you think? Is it neat enough to sell as-is in pdf?

Actual Play: Escape The Undermaze

Yesterday was a Manchester Games Day, and me, Chris, Barry and Nick met up to play some games. I was excited because I had offered to run Escape The Undermaze, my tiny little RPG about thieves trying to find a way out of a labyrinth beneath a dead scientist's house. The game's mechanics are stripped-down from Into The Odd, and everything about the game and setting is on a sheet of A5. I made it as an experiment, was 95% sure it would work, but still hadn't tried it with a group.

The cover side of Escape The Undermaze

The thieves were:

• Chris, playing as Gizzard, we weren't sure if that was a first or last name;
• Nick, playing as Trevor Mountjoy, a disgraced officer;
• Barry, playing as Evans the String, a wily thief capable of Macgyvering out of any situation.

Technically everything below is spoilers of a sort: the sequence of Undermaze locations and encounters are generated from tables and a simple procedure. If you were to play this these would be shuffled around based on what the procedures spit out; plus you as player or GM would be inspired to use the ideas differently. I guess I'm saying, this AP has details that are both unique to this game and potentially common to any game of Escape The Undermaze. Sort-of spoilers below the cut!