A signal reaches out from the Oort Cloud

I posted this on my G+ feed last week, but forgot to make an actual blog post.

The main part of that message reads, if you're interested:

01001001 01101110 01110100 01101111 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101111 01110010 01110100 00001010 01000001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01000101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101000 00001010 00110010 00110111 00100000 00110001 00110000 00100000 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110111

Feel free to decode and share. TL;DR - I've given myself a deadline to motivate me finishing Into The Oort. I think it's workable. And when I announced this last week, the time between the announcement and the deadline was the amount of time it takes a radio signal to go from the Oort Cloud to Earth. It felt right.

The to do list:

• Really figure out what does and doesn't work in my current framework for the game.
• Figure out what I know I want but don't have yet, and fill those gaps.
• Experiment with Scribus to look at layout options with that (everything so far is in an OpenOffice document).
• ART! I want a lot. Which means contacting artists. I'm making a list of the kinds of pieces I think would be good, then checking portfolios. I have one or two names in mind already.
• More playtesting. In particular spaceships and travel. Things are not as concrete in that respect yet and they need to be.
• A playtest pack. Aim for this to be done, in one form or other, for mid-March. Yeah, I know, I think I said that last year. But this year it will be.

Want to know more about Into The Oort? Drop me an email, or a comment, or something. Oh, and I've extended my January Sale on print copies of the zine to the end of the month. Sales help build the art fund for Into The Oort - if you want any or all of the first three issues of A Random Encounter with a little money off then buy them from the sale page. I'll even throw in a print version of Oddpool too!

A Random Encounter #3

Hurrah! It's here! Issue 3 is now available from the Zines page in print, and there's links to the pdfs as well if that's more your thing.

It took a while to get this issue together, but as with many projects, it just finally fell into place like a weird chain of dominoes. The lead domino was Patrick Stuart, my interviewee for the issue: I interviewed Patrick in April and then again in August after Maze of the Blue Medusa was a big winner at the ENnies. Patrick was awesome, and shared a lot of really rich material for the zine; we explored where his interest in games comes from, how he makes what he makes, his motivations and more. Patrick shared so much that this issue has ended up at 36 pages including covers, instead of the 24 of Issues 1 and 2.

The next domino was getting two great artists onboard: Scrap Princess and Jeremy Duncan. Scrap has produced a great cover that follows the series theme of "show the interviewee having a random encounter in something they've made"; she also created a lot of really great original illustrations based on her collaborations with Patrick. I asked Jeremy to create some art based on my favourite False Machine blog posts - his Kamikaze Librarian and Lanthanum Chromate dwarf are awesome, and the Kamikaze Librarian also graces the back cover of the issue.

Another domino was time: finding time to pull everything together has been a real challenge in the last few months. But hitting crunch time has also shown me that this is what I want to do more and more of. There is a real thrill to making something and putting it out into the world (and also that slightly panicked moment when you pull out the credit card to pay for the print run, and wonder if people will buy it!) - and it's also a bit addictive, because you realise more and more that making stuff is not impossible.

The last domino for Issue 3 was the print extra. I really enjoyed making Escape The Undermaze, a one-page microgame, for Issue 2, and the feedback that I got for it was quite positive. I've made a decision to create a microgame for every issue from now on as a print extra - and I've also fallen in love with the format a little bit too. The microgame for Issue 3 is called Thursday Night, and is another short game with minimal rules but hopefully enough inspiration to drive a tense game of a bad situation.

So: the dominoes have fallen and Issue 3 is here. Please check it out in whatever format you like best. If that's pdf then you can get it from Payhip here and from DriveThruRPG here. And if you like print then order it from here and I'll get it in the post to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading this, hope you check out Issue 3 of A Random Encounter, featuring Patrick Stuart!


PS - if you've not got Issues 1 and 2, you can get them from the zines page too!

Coming Soon: A Random Encounter

A Random Encounter is my interview zine, the first issue of which will be out on or before Monday 29th February. It's currently shaping up to be 24 pages, words by me, art by me and a few others, and available in pdf and print - the former from Payhip and DriveThruRPG, and the latter direct from me.

Which all sounds very clean and clinical... As I've said before, I love Inside The Actor's Studio, and my intention with the zine is to interview people in depth - find out why they love games and why they love making games - I want to get their opinions, hear how they make stuff, why they make the choices they make, see if there are any ideas for making stuff that can be generalised. I'm not expecting that after ten issues I'll have figured out the Eight Things You Must Do To Be Successful In The DIY D&D And Indie RPG Blogoplex! but there may be some pointers that stand out that aren't so obvious from first glance.

Issue 1 has been a long time coming. I started the mental prep work for this over six months ago, and began trying to arrange an interview with my first interviewee then. Scheduling conflicts kept mounting up to the point that that person is now the subject of issue 2 - but I have at last been able to interview them, so that's good.

I've learned quite a bit from trying to pull this one together - OpenOffice may not be the best software to do layout in, perhaps I need some more little illustrations for the interior, what the heck and I going to put on the back cover??? - but these are all good things to think about and get to know. It all helps for the next time, and just the act of working on something makes you think about all of the possible next times that might come about.

Making stuff makes you want to make more stuff.

More notes on A Random Encounter soon, and I have plans for a little series of posts on something else that I've become quite enthusiastic about in the last year too. Check back when you can for details.

2016: The Year I Start Self-Publishing

2015, another year, another promise to blog and create more unfulfilled - or was it? I didn't blog as much as 2014, but I played more games than the previous year though, and one game in particular - playing a new game/setting by noisms in August - inspired me to make Oddpool.

It was around this time that I started thinking about making a zine. I had an idea in particular, which was wanting to explore the motivations of RPG creators. The original inspiration was the TV show Inside The Actor's Studio; I love the depth that the host James Lipton goes into, the way he unpicks the why of his guests. I wanted to see why people make games, what they get from them, what they like about them - and as someone who wants to make games too, perhaps learn something along the way.

So in 2016 I'll publish my zine, A Random Encounter, where each issue is a single interview with an RPG creator. I've recorded the interviews for the first two issues, and issue 1 is coming together now. I've commissioned a cover from a terrific artist for the issue, and am looking around for someone to work on issue 2.

Issue 1 will be out by the end of February, and I'm aiming to be bi-monthly-ish. The first issue's interviewee will be announced soon. And I'm going to start thinking and prepping for issues 3 and 4 next month too.

Oh! And in 2016 I hope to have Into The Oort out in some form or other. I need to make it more of a priority in the next few months, pulling a playtest package together is the first order of business.

Who knows, maybe I'll find time to blog a little more too...

Oddpool is out!

Want a peek at a weird ruined city for explorers to look around when playing Into The Odd or other role-playing games? Want to get your creative brains thinking about what people might find at places like the Dead Fields, the Copper Tombs or the Red Keep? Want inspiration for thousands of strange gangs that survive there? Want half a dozen creatures that have been sighted in the ruins?
And do you want it all to fit in your pocket?

You want Oddpool.

Inspired by the city of Liverpool, Oddpool is an eight-page Pocketmod mini-booklet which answers yes to all of the questions above. You can find it on Payhip where it's a pay-what-you-want pdf download, or if you want to be part of an exclusive club, you can buy a print edition from me! Details are on the Oddpool page: to start things off I've got a limited run of 25 numbered and signed copies, printed on good 120gsm paper, cut and folded by me: £1.99 if you're in the UK, £2.75 if you're somewhere else in the world.

But wait, there's more! I wanted to compare paper qualities, so got an equal number of 90gsm copies too, before settling on the 120gsm paper stock. I'll be putting a 90gsm paper copy in every order of a print edition from me, so you can pass it on to someone else. Details for ordering are on the Oddpool page.

Oddpool is the first thing I've made and shared like this, so I hope you like it. If you do, let me know - and maybe let other people know too, that's fine by me!

Big thanks to Chris McDowall, creator of Into The Odd for being so supportive of me making this! And thanks to you for reading this page, whoever you are, I hope you enjoy Oddpool as much as I enjoyed making it.

Eventually

In April I was working on a hack of Into The Odd - and I still am, it's just taking me longer than I thought it would. I had a busy time of things with work for a few months, and then my priorities shifted. Into The Oort is still coming along, but I have a couple of smaller projects that I want to do before then.

The first thing to do is to release Oddpool, an eight-page pocketmod that casts Liverpool as a ruined city for exploring.

Fingers crossed, last details to check and so on and so forth, I'll be releasing this on Friday! Which is very exciting. I'll be releasing it as a pay-what-you-want pdf download, and also looking at getting a small print run printed on 120gsm paper, home-made/-assembled and numbered or something - something a little fun. Over the next few days I'll say more about it - and maybe hint at another project I'm eager to start soon.

But the battery on my laptop is dying so I must sign off for now. More tomorrow.