post world games

Certainly the weirdest of the three games in my kickstarter, this one will probably draw the most talk and/or rants. You decide.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/218255739/six-gmless-roleplaying-games-by-jim-pinto-post-wor/posts/570135

Artwork by Jon Hodgson.

I’ve posted a walk-through of a game of George’s Children, one of six GM-less games being offered in my latest Kickstarter. Check it out.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/218255739/six-gmless-roleplaying-games-by-jim-pinto-post-wor/posts/567678

Or an interview with me, BY Brian Fitzpatrick.

http://www.gameknightreviews.com/2013/08/interview-jim-pinto-of-post-world-games/

One of the many stories my father told me was about how our mother abandoned my brother and I when I was 2 and he was 6 months. My father had to drive for 20 hours to get to the police station where we were being held because we’d been found in an abandoned apartment on a mattress.

I’ve never met my mother and I’ve always assumed this story was true. If you think writers go to dark places on TV to manipulate you, please understand that some of us have lived it.

I spent the next 14 years of my life living with people who hated me. I never heard the words “I love you,” I was never encouraged to be anything, and the only two people that mattered to me in the world both died by the time I was 25.

I do not have a measure of happiness similar to most people around my. My barometer of success is different than most as well. I do not believe anything good comes from spreading sunshine, but there are plenty of people who do.

Why am I writing this on my gaming site?

Let me explain.

Stories of fake happiness, tabloid emptiness, and the general malaise that comes with people misusing words (like hate) because they’ve never really felt any emotions kind of deaden us and lead us down the road of cognitive bias.

The internet is a dreadful place in too many ways. Yes, there are pictures of cats to make us smile, and chainsaw suit comics to distract us from patterns of the familiar. But for the most part, we avoid sites that bother us, avoid discourse from people who hurt our feelings, and only indulge in the words and dialogs that are easiest. We’ve convince ourselves that our work is hard and therefore we need happy distractions to “literally” make it to the end of the day.

We certainly wouldn’t want anything negative impacting us and anything critical or substantive is clearly negative or hateful. The solution is to change the world by only being happy online, as an industry professional recently pointed out.

But I think he’s wrong.

And I think we have more to offer than that.

Creation of any kind requires us to go to personal places. Granted someone knitting a scarf probably isn’t dredging up the same emotional turmoil as Jackson Pollack did each morning with a bottle of bourbon in his stomach before he headed to the barn to paint. But the idea that you’ve created something personal is still there.

And it still hurts when people reject it, criticize it, and call it “fluff.”

But it should hurt. It should be those things. Art should constantly be examined, torn apart, dissected, and made better. Criticism is the most important tool in your arsenal for getting better and making something that matters to you. Anyone can write the sentence, “The Elves of Narklan are tall, thin, and adept with the bow. They do not like orcs, gaining a +1 competence bonus on all ranged attacks against them. But they are fond of dwarves, if only at a distance.” It takes someone years to master the phrasing, “The blighted dark elves of the haunted Narklan has been without the knowledge or language to build fire for over 100 years. The curse of the wellspawn hag who severed their fae-cords and drove them into the Hills of Night still lives, in spirit alone. Each day the elves wake with her name on their tongues, strengthening her hold over their people, reminding them of their curse. It is a perpetual hell for the elves, one they are unlikely to break from while the name of the great hag still lingers.”

Now. I’m not saying that’s the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s a first draft, done off the top of my head in order to illustrate a point. I am a 16-year veteran of the industry, with numerous accolades and awards. And none of that matters to me if I can’t get better at this. None of that matters if I don’t listen to criticism from people I respect to push me to work harder. None of that matters if everyone blows sunshine up my ass and tells me, “it’s great.”

I don’t want to rest on my laurels. I don’t want an internet that is safe from controversy. I don’t want to work in an industry that thinks they can keep telling me then elves are good with a bow.

So. To anyone who knows me. Anyone who reads my work. Anyone who thinks feelings are more important than truth. I’m sorry we don’t see eye to eye on things all the time. But that’s what makes creating things worth it for me. If I always gave you 100% what you expected, I would never exceed your expectations. And If all I ever do is tell you how great everything is all the times, you’ll never see the blemishes underneath that make things better.

So. Sorry A+ movement. But I can’t agree.

I like my world a little cracked. A little tarnished. A little gray.

“In the remote town of Northern Falls, Rebecca Ashwick has been murdered. But no one seems too keen on solving the murder, not even the residents…”

Forget-Me-Not (FMN) is a progressive, roleplaying game experience that plays in about 3 hours, though longer games are an option. It can be played with or without a gamemaster, but requires at least 3 players.

Set in the fictional town of Northern Falls, FMN allows players to take on the roles of various key figures in town — the Sheriff, the Town Drunk, the Heiress, the Reporter, etc. — but no one owns any of the characters. Each scene is played different from the last, as we explore the confusing and weird behaviors of the people unaffected by Rebecca Ashwick’s death.

If this is your first game, you can start reading and playing within a few minutes. If you’ve never played a roleplaying game before, just relax and let FMN take you to your favorite eccentric stories.

Forget-Me-Not is part of a six game series of GMless games available now on Kickstarter.

In Dying Memoryes, players take on the roles of crewman trapped in cryogenic sleep aboard a ship in deep space. The spaceship has gone adrift, heading into the orbit of a wayward planet (or a star… or a nebula). As the ship’s unavoidable and tragic decent to the inhospitable world continues, the crewmen suffer traumatic episodes of fragmented memories from their past, in an attempt to rebuild their lives. Their final moments spent trying to formulate who they were and what is happening.

Dying Memoryes is a structured freeform roleplaying game which strings together disjointed memories from the characters past. As the game progresses, the players’ unconscious unravels more and more perceived truths as they attempt to find the missing memories that made them who they are.

Game play without a GM is fairly simple in this game. All conflict is resolved with head-to-head die rolls at the end of a scene and ownership of the memory goes to the winner, though there are caveats for 2nd and 3rd place in a scene.

The game continues in a round-robin format until one person wakes from cryogenic sleep, either because their persona is fully realized through numerous, reasonable memories, or a single psychosis (or series of psychoses) rattles the character from slumper.

Whatever the case, the first person awake is the only one with a chance to save the ship and final moments of the game hinge on a single die roll.

The game starts with an empty character sheet like this:

But at the end of the game, can look like this:

Check out more on my kickstater over at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/218255739/six-gmless-roleplaying-games-by-jim-pinto-post-wor/posts/550525

Art by Jon Hodgson

George’s Children is a roleplaying story game about a future devoid of adults. In a nutshell. The game is devoid of a GM and is mostly narrativism, with the other players complicating each other’s lives with increased challenges. Told as a “day-in-the-life” game about children who’ve come together on a single journey, the game emulates Lord of the Flies, Mad Max, the Road, and all of my favorite dark post apocalyptic stories.

Character creation is fast and simple and so is the dice mechanic. Everything is designed to feel like the players are the children in the story. The ultimate goal is to acquire more Glory than Worry so the children can reach their destination.

Think of this like “plastic space” where you travel until Act 3 magically happens. The children can stand in front of the gates of Mordor all day long, but until a child gets a fifth point of Glory, the doors don’t open.

Told over 5 acts, the stories are rich and meaningful and each age actually feels and plays very differently, despite the simple methods of character creation.

George’s Children was a meaningful exercise by Jon and I. The first time we released it (in 2005), the proceeds went to charity. I lost $450 promoting it. I hope to continue our efforts to get this game into people’s hands. It is a lush game, with dark tones that go to places traditional roleplaying games do not. I hope you agree.

George’s Children is part of a six-game GM-less series of games available as part of my latest kickstarter. I’ll post a pretty character sheet soon and update other games as the month progresses.

Kickstarter

Anyone who knows me, knows this is one of my favorite independent story games.

I recently remade the cards because I was tired of shuffling paper. I like cards. Sturdy cards.

Anyway.

Here is a link to their game:

http://thoughtfulgames.com/montsegur1244/

Here is a link to the cards I made for their game:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/116309/Montsegur-1244-Game-Cards

They are available for free download, or $8 for a printed deck (on nice card stock).