The game designers / writers / artists alliance
Let me brief: We, are all a bunch of creative people, but we all have our shortcomings; either if it is lack of time, little experience, artistic skill (or lack of), typesetting skills, writing, just pick yours. I as a Spaniard who lives in Spain may have a few more with my English and my ability to attend conventions or launch anything on kickstarter. We are in the long tail of a small market, and we can hardly produce a game a year at great personal cost; and let me not get started about marketing. A labour of love, yes, we do it because we love doing it, but What if we cooperate in a...
Read MoreDoes the world need another role-playing game?
Let’s suppose there was no game out there but D&D; and I mean the original edition back in the seventies. It is safe to say that you could play zillions of adventures just with that. Even, given time and some ingenuity any self-respecting game-master or other hyphenated fellow could have expanded the original rules to cover sci-fi, dark fantasy, the roaring twenties, pulp or a good old-fashioned wargame. In fact, that is exactly what many did in the good old days. But then, you know, there are many of us who were never satisfied with classes, levels and experience games or who...
Read MoreNewsies & Bootblacks final draft is finished
This is how you spend your weekend if you are publishing a role-playing game on your own: correcting typos —and yet knowing it won’t be 100% perfect. And then you wake on Monday at 5:00 AM so you can tell the world you still have work to do. But it is great to have the game finished and complete; or at least the first edition of it. I still need to fix a few issues and add a couple of features, which I hope to have solved soon. Yeah, I say soon, I have learned the hard way that on your first attempt to publish anything you should not promise any deadlines. Basically because you...
Read MoreWrite me an adventure
So I am looking for a freelance writer to help me with one of the Adventures programmed to be included in Newsies & Bootblacks: The Newsboy Strike. And I’m paying, perhaps not as you deserve, but I am paying. That other strike There is no way around, this historic event was the one in which Newsies, the Disney movie was based on. The last thing I want is a re-telling of that film. A Game Master playing with their friends can, of course, play the game as they want, but I cannot and will not publish anything that can be thought as a copyright infringement. It’s against the...
Read MoreVague descriptions, symbolic maps
Since Newsies & Bootblacks was Newsies & Pickpockets I wanted my locations to be vague. The map of New Paris includes no scale and it displays what it could be one of those touristic maps which display the major attractions of the city. There are no street maps and no interior maps. In fact in the very location of a shop or institution is flexible. At most, I suggest the area of New Paris in which that place should be located, and that’s that. I am keeping that. And I am keeping that because I believe in players. I believe that you, if given just enough material, will be able...
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