In June, I contacted Bully Pulpit Games about posting an audio recording of the rules to The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach. They were very nice about it. At Gencon, Roach creator Jason Morningstar premiered an add-on to the Roach called The Roach Returns. The expansions details two new settings for Roach-y mayhem to take place.

I had an idea for a new setting and that's today's Thing. Today's Thing actually took a few days.

The Roach always struck me as an evil, evil soap, so why not expand on that idea. It's Dallas meets American Psycho. The Cashingtons are not just merely rich, but unholy rich. And like most large rich families, the siblings are at each other's throats. You play a spoiled sibling out to harm your other siblings. This is BEFORE The Roach arrives. Greed is great, but bedlam is better.

The four-page PDF features character sheets, events, business interests and obsessions, descriptions, dice charts and play rules, plus a new rules page add-on to encourage deep, dark secrets to come to the surface. Most of the changes in setting can be inferred from the PDF and your imagination can fill in the gaps. I hope it's playable. I haven't play-tested it just yet. I just finished the new setting today. If you want to know more about this weird game, The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach follow the links below down the rabbit hole. The Roach, um, commands you.

Also, if you have any suggestions for improvement, leave a comment or email me.

Grab the Rules in handy audio form MP3 version HERE or AAC version HERE. The rules are slightly abridged and poorly read by me. Also, the card text was left out, so buy the game. Or come over to my house and play. This is a taste.

Download the new setting, The Cashington Roach HERE.
It's a small four-page PDF, handy for printing and usable with existing Roach rules.

Enjoy.

Tags: game

After spending a weekend figuring out Fantasy Football, I've decided to start a faux advocacy group, Games Not Gaming. GNG is founded on the idea that if you have to bet on a game to play it, the game itself is boring. It's not an anti-gambling group, it's an anti-lame game group. There's no real game in Fantasy Football. It's just gambling dressed up and nerdified. Ever play Blackjack NOT for money. Bo-Ring. However, people play Monopoly, a game about getting money for free, with no bets everyday. The only betting game I can think of that's interesting is poker. And really, it's just mildly interesting. Playing for no money renders poker pointless. Slots ISN'T a game. Real games of skill and strategy are only played for money by hustlers and fools. Case in point, pool. And you can enjoy pool without money changing hands.

So remember, if you have to pay to play, the play is lame. Word.

Tags: game, web

Have you ever made a wish list on Amazon or somewhere like that? Forget all about those lists, this is the ultimate wish list! You can 'wish' for anything on any website, and it has a plugin for some browser windows, too, so one click wisting is at my fingertips. Plus, when looking around at others' wists, I found that some folks use their wist to list projects they'd like to do. I may have to make a second wist for all the tutorials! Come wist with me! (as always, my username is seeshells)

Tags: shopping, game, tutorial, zombie, web

Today's Thing is a game I wrote using those micromagnet sticks I played with on Monday. It's a build and fight combat game with a few simple variables. I'm sure the different values in the game will have to be changed to make it more exciting, but overall, I like the game mechanics. You assimilate various battling ships. Each ship has can have different strengths. Check it out and drop me a line or leave a comment. You need many magnet sticks of at least four colors and balls, a pair of dice and pen and paper.

You could probably play with Legos with some slight retooling. The PDF is three pages and the game is in Beta. This idea could certainly be made in the marketplace into a nifty bits full-sized game.

Grab the PDF HERE.

Awesome fun!

Tags: game

We watched the movie Zodiac over the weekend. Seeing his cipher reminded me that I had made up a personal cipher when I was a kid. Here is a puzzle made with my very simple cipher, with a prize Thing going to the first person who can solve it! Leave your guess as a comment.

Tags: code, game, puzzle

Thinking and talking with Bryan about his game idea, made me think more about a couple games I had ideas for. Here's one, sorry no fancy pdf.

Rolling for Kindness

Grab two dice, if you don't have any dice handy, you can use this. Roll to see what kind act you will be performing today. Finish the act before you go to bed.

2. Say 'hello' to a stranger.
3. Leave change in the pop or candy machine.
4. Roll again. Smile at that number of people.
5. Strike up a pleasant conversation with a coworker that you normally don't chat with.
6. Pick up trash as you walk.
7. Buy yourself a flower. You need to be kind to yourself, too.
8. Leave some reading material (book/magazine/paper) in a public place.
9. Give a really good tip to your server or cashier.
10. Send a card to someone telling them how much they mean to you.
11. Offer assistance to an older person.
12. Donate something to a shelter.

Tags: game

This week is a bit odd. I'm not sure how much I can share with TTOTD'ers. Last week, I wrote a game, Alphadice. After thinking about that game, I've developed a new game of which I don't have a title yet. I believe this game to have marketability. It's a simple to learn word game with almost limitless variations and with many different, scalable ways to play. I've already thought of an expansion. The website for the game could host an electronic version as well as home brew play variations. I would like to market this game and TTOTD will mark the progress. I don't want to share the full game, as I have not written it yet or developed the cards, until I get a copyright. I'm also looking around to see if a similar game/game mechanic is already on the market place. I've never obtained a copyright or contacted game publishers. I hope to have a polished playable version by Nukecon at the end of September.

Right now, I'm looking for play testers. When I have a completed PDF, I'll e-mail you the PDF file. You'll have to cut out the cards and supply your own pennies for tokens and a pair of dice. You'll also sign a non-disclosure agreement. If the game gets published, you'll get, hopefully, a credit in the rule book and website as well as some other goodies. Right now, the game is planned to include 144 unique cards, either 200 or 400 small tokens of four colors and a pair of dice, possibly eight pair of dice of four different colors. I'd imagine the game would sell in the 15-20 dollar range.

I'f you'd like to be a play tester, e-mail me and let me know.

Shelly's been helping bounce ideas around and can vouch that I am fulfilling my TTOTD responsibilities, although the posts might be light, the work behind them isn't. The first hurdle is to work out all the math. Yep, math lies behind everything. Then to the graphics work. Then the rules writing. I hope to have a PDF to play testers within two weeks.

Tags: game

Today's Thing is a simple word game I'm surprised no one has written yet. Alphadice is a word game using dice and the cards I made in the PDF. It's simple, adaptable and easy to travel, like Boggle or Scrabble without all the fuss. All you need is two six-sided die, a watch, and some pencil and paper plus the PDF. The game can be played in fifteen minutes and is for 2 to 6 players. You'll also need to print out the last two pages of the PDF and cut out the cards. The PDF is small.

Hey, I wrote a game today!

Feedback is appreciated.



Download the PDF HERE.

Tags: game

About halfway through writing the evil, evil game I had planned for today, I realized I wouldn't have enough time to finish the post. I'll have it done for Monday. Although I did remember a puzzle I created when I was bored in middle school. Can you solve it?

Tags: game, art

This free game cost me thirty bucks! A few weeks ago, I wrote about a free zombie game I ran across called Dead of Night. Today's Thing was to put the game together. At the time I downloaded it, Dead of Night was a free PDF with all the maps, cards, tokens, graphics in the PDF. I've found out theat the game is to come out commercially in a few months. So, I decided to print out the 40-plus pages and cut out all the bits.

In just ink alone, I must have spent 30 bucks. The cards are double-sided. There are over 30 rooms, 80 cards, 50 items, 100 zombies as well as other pieces and a 28 page rule book. The whole project took over three hours. I haven't played the game yet, but it looks like there's a lot of customization and turns in the game like a Zombie movie.

Looking at the commercial version online, if the game's any good, this free game may cost me another thirty bucks. The commercial version looks nice, if not exactly the same as the PDF version graphics-wise.

Tags: game, project

Okay, it's a stupid title for a game. That's one of the zillion points that'll change as this game develops. These are the beta rules, beyond pre-alpha. This is version.002 of the rules, basically just a few ideas strung together under a generic theme.

The basic idea is to combine a tile laying strategy game with a miniatures game. Do well in the first phase, you'll do well in the second, but a good war gamer could still prevail after a lousy set-up.

Much work will have to done during play testing, probably whole sections will be revamped and overhauled. This version also uses another game's tiles and pieces to play. Hopefully, I'll develop the playing pieces as I work on the game. For now, you'll need a copy of Zombies: The End, some other zombie figurines from other Zombie games (really any consistent token could work) and two decks of cards.

The rough rules after the jump.

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Tags: game, rules

Two weeks ago, Shelly and I joined a gaming league. The league hasn't started yet---this weekend--- but soon. The idea is you play a different game each week throughout the summer and earn points for how well you do against other players. I look over at our wall of games and see about 20-25 games we've never even played. I've read the rules to all of them and oogled over the crunchy bit goodness, but time is a monster. This gaming league, hopefully, will spurn some more game playing. It's also a chance to meet some new people---people nerdier than myself.

To celebrate joining the league, we, of course, bought a game. Recently at a game con, we played Tom Jolly's Cave Troll. It was a fun, relatively easy to learn game that mixed luck, strategy, player interaction and game engagement. Lots of fun and although I lost the one game I played, I wanted to play again and the game felt close, even against a much more experienced player.



So, we bought Tom Jolly's other game, Drakon. Cave Troll was sold out. While I like Drakon okay, Cave Troll was the better way to spend 25 bucks for a game that plays in about a half hour. I'm doing a Drakon review because I've only played Cave Troll once. We've played Drakon three times, two two-player games and on four-player game. The two-player games were more satisfying because you could develop some small plans and see them through. In Drakon, players lay dungeon tiles and move around the newly created board gathering gold. The first player to 10 gold wins. As you enter each new tile or room, different room abilities are activated. These abilities are the heart of the game. Each room has different arrows out of the 2.5 square inch tiles, so tile place really determines where players can go. A giant dragon can be released and crush you, but in all three games, the dragon wasn't a threat because the rooms that activate him are too few. I'd like more dragon action. Early on, each player figured out a gold loop, a set of tiles to maximize gold collection. By the third game, stopping these loops became a focus. The best way was to limit the amount of choices the others have in tile laying. Because of the new strategy, the last game was much longer than the other two. Plus, having an out tile to win greatly increased the enjoyability. Drakon's a decent game if you like to play to screw over other players instead of just focusing on winning yourself. It's not a Munchkin level screw-job, but this element seems to be prevalent in most modern games.
This bits and piece are nice and worth the 25 bucks. It'd be nice to have painted figures---no game does, except Marvel Heros. Also, the large tiles are a pain to shuffle and manage, but that's mostly unavoidable. There's no dice-rolling and all the luck comes from the draw of the tiles.

Overall, Drakon is a six out of ten. It's a decent game to play in a half hour, not too much of a brain drain, but a bit easy to fall into predictable patterns of play. 'kay?

Tags: game, review

It's a week of game-related Things. Monday kicks off with a whole damn professional game for you to enjoy, minus the cards. About a year ago, I recorded the rules to The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach for Shelly to listen to on her ipod at work. Last week, I contacted the nice folks at Bully Pulpit Games and they said I could share the recording on this website. Hooray!

The Roach is a rules lite, GM-less tabletop role playing game. It's not the nerdy elf 'n swords RPG new players think of when they think of RPG's, but a weird Lovecraftian mix of pompous, back-stabbing, dark humored, egotistical college professors and the hotbed of turn of the century small-town college politics. Oh, and alien roaches that infect you and guide your actions. It's eeevvviiiiiilll, I tells ya!

From the website:

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a dark comedy of manners, lampooning academia and asking players to answer a difficult question - are you willing to swallow a soul-eating telepathic insect bent on destroying human civilization?
No?
Even if it will get you tenure?

So, you get the idea. The game's got a mean funny bone. The setting is Pemberton college, a small northeast college in 1919. Each player in the game plays a full or associate professor just trying to get ahead. You have your enemies, other players, and your friends, also other players. You create the ever-increasing crazy plot lines around six events of a school year with the help of other players, other characters you create, and cards you draw. The cards are the genius of the game and I think open the game up to people who aren't fully comfortable playing a full-on stats-heavy RPG. The cards tell you if your infected and give you a general guide what to do each setting. And you can learn Sumarian. Think of the game as improv with dice. Act-ING! The game can be played in an evening and actually has an end and a winner. Although winning really isn't the point, it's the journey. The emphasis is on characters, black humor and just plain strangeness.

You'll need a variety of multi-sided die, from 4-sided to 12-sided and that's about it. Visit the Bully Pulpit Games download page and pick up a character sheet, a 1919 events cheat sheet, a comic, a short movie and some extra rules errata. You can check out a 14-page preview before you download the audio file as well. The game does need the cards to play which come with the game, but you could make up your own cards or better yet, go out and buy the game!. You can buy it here. The Roach is twenty bucks and if you buy the game, you also get a rubber roach. Cool. I think as a future Thing, I may try to make some more Roach cards to add to the game. Also, roam around Indie Press Revolution, there's a bunch of imaginative low-cost games both in soft back and the much cheaper PDF's.

About the audio file, it's an AAC file best played in itunes. The file is about 30 megs, contains chapter breaks, royalty-free sound effects and music and a picture you can see in itunes. The rules run a little over an hour. I admit since I didn't expect to be sharing this sound file with the world, I used my crappy microphone, didn't use my super professional broadcasting voice and have a few vocal flubs. Also, I didn't add in the rules errata. I enjoyed reading the rules and, as a future Thing, may rerecord them with some more professionalism and better equipment. Hey Bully Pulpit people, do you need an audio version of your other game Drowning and Falling? Let me know. Love your games, love to help. They've got a free version of Drowning and Falling up.

You can download the rules HERE or click on the third roach.

The Roach commands you!
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Tags: game, podcast, project, rules

Tags: game, photography

Tags: photography, game

In my never ending quest to goof off at work, I've been trying to develop 'work games,' that is, games you can play with little or no set-up at work, maybe during a break or while doing other mundane activities.

At work, we were having a discussion about names and their meanings, so I thought up this social game for three or more players in three short phases. This game works best with people you have a casual relationship with, such as coworkers or people at a party.

Blame the Name
Sometimes, names can feel like destiny. For example, as a kid, every Kevin I knew was a bully. So, I have a slight suspicion of all Kevins. It's irrational, of course, but the basis of this game. The basis lies around the simple fill-in phrase, "All (name)s are (adjective)."
To play the game you'll need a few scraps of paper, pens or pencils and a list of baby names. You can find a list here, but there are lots of lists online. It's a good idea of sticking to a list of 100 as the names will be chosen at random. Also, pick how many rounds you plan to play. Each round consists of the three phases.

Phase One-Picking a Name
Choose a new name. If you have a two lists---one for girls, one for boys---flip a coin, heads for boys and tails for girls. Then have a player pick a number. Match the number to the list and there's your name. In the rest of the rules, I'll refer to this name as the 'named person.' After the name is announced, each player writes down an adjective to describe the main quality of every person with this name. It's intuition-based, so your first reaction is usually the best. This descriptive word will be the basis of Phase Two, the storytelling phase. Some descriptive word examples include any adjective you can name---sexy, model, prissy, butch, brainy, weakling, etc. Stereotypes work well. All the players then reveal their descriptive word. Each word that matches with another player receives one point. Multiple matches count for multiple points. For example, if three people all have the same word, each of those people would receive two points, one for each other matching word. Keep a running score of points on a separate piece of paper.
A variant---Instead of one descriptive word, each player writes down three descriptive words, but this means three different stories, one for each word, in the storytelling phase.

Phase Two-Storytelling Phase
Each player will take turns telling a story about the Named Person and how they are like your descriptive word. When deciding a story to tell, remember your story must fall into one of three categories:
A. Real----This story happened to you with the named person and all the details being true, as you remember them.
B. Bluff----You made this story up. It's a fabrication. A bluff may also be a real story, just one that did not happen to you and the Named Person. For example, if the name was 'Babe' you could say 'All Babes are gluttons' and tell a story about how this 'Babe' you knew used to eat 20 hot dogs before every baseball game. The real Babe Ruth used to very often pig out on hot dogs before games, so this is a bluff. If the story is about you, but your saying it's about the named person, it's also a bluff.
C. Fictional---This is a story involving you and a fictional character. For example, using 'Babe' again, you could say 'All Babes are filthy' and tell a story about this 'Babe' you knew who used to literally roll around in the mud. Of course, I'm referring to the fictional 'Babe the pig' from those kids movies. You wouldn't mention the pig part in the story, but could place him on a farm and match up other details from the movies. Don't mix up fictional names with other named persons. Use the same fictional name always.

Each story only needs to be a few minutes or so. This is also a great way to work in that great story about so-and-so, you know, that great story you're always trying to shoehorn into normal conversations.

Start each story with, "All (Named Person) are (descriptive word), I knew a (Named Person) and they....."

Phase Three-Voting

After all the stories, each player is up for voting. The first storyteller is first. All of the other players chose whether they think the storyteller's tale is Real, Bluff or Fictional. Each story, if multiple adjectives are played, is voted on separately. After all the player have written down their guesses, the storyteller reveals the nature of the story. If the story is Real, tell the other players the full name of the object of the stories and any other details. If the story is a bluff, reveal if it's a total fabrication, happened to a real person and name them or if it happened to you. If the story is fictional, name the fictional character and source.

Each player who guessed correctly receives one point. If the player is incorrect, the storyteller receives a point. Repeat voting process for each storyteller.

Optional rule---After the main voting is finished, each player votes for the best story. They can not vote for themselves. Each vote delivers one point to it's storyteller.

Tally up the points and declare a winner. In case of a tie, the player with the most Real stories and highest score wins. If no Real stories, have another round of best story votes for the tied players. If still a tie, the game ends in a tie or play another round.

Tags: game

Today's Thing is a Mac OSX screensaver. Shelly and I have been playing The Spoils Collectable Card Game. It's a good game that fixes most of the problems of the now bloated Magic the Gathering. Another tip, you can play almost any CCG with the excellent Lackey CCG Mac and PC program. It's free and well supported. I got all of the cards for The Spoils screensaver from there. Unfortunately, they're all the low quality JPEG scans as that's the only Lackey plugin currently for The Spoils. Someday, I hope to code my own game to play on Lackey as there's a way to make plugins for the program. Oh, I used FotoMagico to make the screensaver, the new version has a way to make mac screensavers. I bought the older version, so I apologize for the tiny banner in the screensaver. The screensaver is all the cards in the game in alphabetical order. There's some neat artwork and interesting mechanics.

Download the zip file here. It's 58 megs. Can you spot the MST3K joke in the card?

Tags: mac, game, software

Here's a broken Magic variation for lazy and cheap gamers. This variation can work for most card games. Read More...

Tags: comedy, game

Today starts a few days of game related posts. I've been thinking about non-traditional games and trying to create games you could do anytime, anywhere-often without the other players even being around. Workplace shenanigans, pranks, dares and just plain ways to keep your mind entertained. Yea, some of it is a tadmean, but slight displaced hostility at the workplace is how our economy runs.

I've got a CCG-game variation for lazy nerds tomorrow and a more ambitious idea for Thursday or Friday. I think games should generate talk between players.

In some ways, this website is so Shelly and I have more ideas to explore and talk about before all the necessary 'maintenance' talk that seems to suck up so much time.

The two shortish, gamish games today can easily be adapted to your own taste.

Created out of boredom, underwritten in haste...

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Tags: game

Here's a Chess variant I wrote that incorporates some modern gaming ideas into Chess. I think it adds a few more levels of strategy to the game. I haven't play tested the game yet, so let me know if any of the rules are unworkable or confusing. I think they're pretty straightforward.

I'm pretty proud of the rules and I hope Chess Heads have fun with it. Feel free to download the PDF and pass it around.

Here's the PDF.

(Update: After talking with Jed at work, I've slightly changed the game and PDF to match the point system used in traditional Chess. Thanks for the feedback. I always got my butt kicked in Chess, so I know little about strategies or the finer points of competition rules. Hey, I still call the Knight piece, "the horsey piece." Oh, if you don't like the point system, change it to match your taste, no big deal. Open Source Gaming is all about customization.)

Tags: game