post world games

I am disappointed in myself for going this long without posting. So. I’m going to make it up to you with lots of information.

For starters. The GMZero Kickstarter that I am working on is about 40% complete. George’s Children and Dying Memoryes are at the 90% mark. Forget-Me-Not is about 25% complete, and the other three only have characters/character sheets completed.

But those look good.

The writing is going slowly, because I keep getting distracted with other projects.

But I promise to have a lot more done by the end of November. In fact, the first two should be done fairly quickly here.

I’ve also been doing work on the Cairn line for Souljar Games. The RPG and the playing cards.

And we will soon be announcing…

Dice Crawl.

Dice Crawl is a combination of Farkle-style dice rolling and dungeon-crawling. With lots of classes and races to mix things up. The game won’t come with dice (you need 25 per player) in order to keep costs down, but the tiles are awesome.

Drawn by Alyssa Faden and painted by me, the tiles look like this.

Dice Crawl is one of about 20 board game and card games I have sitting around that I hope to start releasing. Souljar is going to publish it, so Postworldgames can focus on all the nonsense RPGs and Toolcards and other projects that keep me up all night.

While I was supposed to be working on GMZero material, I started working on something called Protocol.

Protocol is another series of GMless games, but these will be in the $3 to $5 range, and be playable in seconds. They are extremely rules light and all use the (relatively) same mechanic. No need to learn a new game every time you want to try something new. The first 12 games in the series will include fantasy soldiers trying to make it home after a war (based loosely on the idea of civil war soldiers having to get themselves home), strange eons (my take on a familiar mythos), 1960s East German propaganda, a dying space station, rendition, and even frontier settlers. And that’s just the first half.

There will also be custom games and a chance for backers to vote on the last two games in the series. This should be kickstarting before the end of the year.

Toolcards 2 is coming. More information when I have it.

I’ve been working on [NM 156], as well. Which you may have heard about. It’s my homage to Logan’s Run and Dystopian books. I was just a simple run/chase game and now it’s grown into a monster. It’s going out free to the backers of GMZero, but will be available soon enough.

Finally, we have Perpetual, a game by Mark Nau and myself. Perpetual is another RPG. This one  allows players to recreate serial cable TV shows like Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Mad Men, The Shield, Son’s of Anarchy, Sorpanos, and even Walking Dead. The game play is very simple, but the guidelines and charts are the real meat of the game, giving you everything you need to grow your TV show.

Perpetual is game 8 in the GMZero series.

Whew. That was a lot of data.Let’s hope I don’t wait this long to talk again.

Well.

At the very least, the character sheets are pretty.

Straight Jacket is a fast, fun card game for 3 or more players — 4 or 5 is best. In Straight Jacket, the players take on the roles of inmates wearing straight jackets and trapped in a padded cell. All of you want to escape, but you’re not exactly pragmatic about it.

The person with the most points at the end of the games, wriggles from their jacket and escapes.

The rules are available here for free. The cards are available on Drive Thru Cards for $15.99.

http://www.drivethrucards.com/product/118812/Straight-Jacket

straightjacketrules

Check it out on drive thru rpg.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/117376/Solomon-Guild-A-Gallery-of-Rogues-Part-I

Depending on who you ask, or who is asking this questions, you will receive a myriad of answers.

“It’s about the orcs fighting back.”

“It’s about zombies and chainsaws.”

“It’s about isolation in the frozen north.”

“It’s about trains on the surface of the moon.”

“It’s about pigmy skeletons on the island of forever.”

The list goes on.

Generally, I answer this question.

“Well. It’s complicated.”

My games are usually about many different thing, none of them ubiquitous or even definable. My new project with Caias Ward comes to mind. Sure, my games share a few things in common, but no two are for everyone. I figured out a long time ago that when people hear, “it’s about dealing with loss and coming to terms with what you can’t control” they usually want to leave as soon as they can. “Freak.”

“It’s about perception and whether or not you can trust what you see or believe.”

“It’s about isolation and detachment.”

“It’s about judgement, guile, and fear.”

“It’s about nationalism and the lies we tell ourselves about community.”

The list goes on.

Cognitive bias is so strong in the gaming community that unless it opens with some kind of plot, people can’t fathom what your game is about. Certainly there’s an equipment list? Monsters to kill? Treasure? Adventure of some kind?

No? Okay. So what do I do in your game?

Maybe this is a better question. It certainly cuts through the bullshit exterior of the game that could be anything.

“Straightjacket is about being in a insane asylum and you’re a patient trying to escape. You play cards, frantically trying to escape your bonds, rarely with your own best interest in mind.” I suppose that’s a better answer than, “it’s a goofy beer and pretzel game where you get points for playing cards.”

Terminology is an important facet when talking about what you’re making or playing. So if you’re making a game about pirates, it might be important to say, “an adventure game about pirates” as opposed to “it’s about being a pirate in a prison during his last days before the gallows.” Those are two very different games.

But both are about pirates.

Players in games often do this too. “We’re in a campaign now where the dragons have come back to reclaim the world.”

Okay. Great. But are you fighting the dragons? Are they just a replacement for gods? What’s the theme? Tone? Is your GM just drunk on bad anime? “We’re in a campaign where the dragons have returned, slaying the god kings of the seven cities of man. Four have fallen already and we’re trying to save the last three, though we suspect we can only save two. The game is really dark and reminds me of kafka, the way the GM gives us visions of the world from the point of view of the dragons, sometimes. I would compare it to Lynch’s vision of Dune, without the bad color and hair.”

Next time you think about asking/answering these kinds of question, consider what point of view you are already starting at and if all you want is the veneer of zombies or the inner crunch of the undead’s torment.

Well. The kickstarter is over. I’m kind of tired. That’s #4 for me.

#1 and #3 are completed. #2 is having printer issues. #4… well.

#4 is going to be interesting. I have four places to update people on what’s going on with it. That alone is work. And then there’s showing off the games, getting people’s feedback and editing. Cards. Fiasco. Plus I’m working on Cairn with Ross Isaacs. That’s a lot of work.

Plus. I have to start on something in January of 2014, right?

Not to mention more toolcards when those are ready.

As if I was getting any sleep.

Okay. Enough for now. I have work to do. Get off my laugh kids.

Below is page 1 of George’s Children. If you’d backed this, you’d have already seen pages 2 through 7 as well.

With 12 hours to go, you might want to listen now, rather than later.

http://www.gmsmagazine.com/podcasts/the-gms-magazine-podcast-episode-112six-games-with-jim-pinto

You really need to read the updates to see just how much stuff you’re getting…

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/218255739/six-gmless-roleplaying-games-by-jim-pinto-post-wor/posts

A walk-through of how to play Death of Ulfstater, game four in the series.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/218255739/six-gmless-roleplaying-games-by-jim-pinto-post-wor/posts/570746