Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I seek your input, everyone – especially from the non-gamers who read this (if there are any of you at all, that is).

In Billions and Billions of Bullets, I kinda want there to be a lot of death. Not only will the main character be killing a lot of foo’s, but they’ll likely die painful deaths themselves before the game is over as well. To best facilitate the in-game narration of these deaths, and to give the players some ideas when narrating the deaths of others, I’d like to follow in the “everything can be randomly drawn if so desired” spirit of Cannibal Contagion and include a table containing 52 ways for a character to die, conveniently placed in the back of the book.

I’d be grateful honored if anyone who reads this would leave a comment or three with some ideas of ways that they would like to see a character. The rules:

* Must be under 12 words (I’d like to have it in a neat line-by-line chart)
* Must be adaptable to a variety of settings
* Can by gruesome, simple, embarrassing, epic, or ignoble, but I’d rather they not be intentionally amusing. This game is not being written with the tongue-in-cheek approach I took with Cannibal Contagion. One or two amusing ones might be snuck into the list, but please steer away from that.

So for example:
* Deadly fall from a building
* Ripped apart by pitbulls
* Bullet through both of the eyes, execution-style
* The worst food poisoning ever.
* Death by firing squad
* Poisoned champagne
* Lots and lots of scorpions

What are your ideas?

Some of you who read my private journal probably already know about this one, but consider this my official public announcement. For a few weeks now, I’ve been working in full steam-powered chuggalug motion on the new game. It’s called Billions and Billions of Bullets. It is a game in which you must solve all of your problems with the clever application of a gun. Bad day at work? Girlfriend break your heart? They put mayonnaise on your BLT despite you specifically asking for none? You have a gun. You know what to do.

Here’s the working Blurb I’m using to get into the spirit of things:

In 1835, Samuel Colt patented the first mass-produced, multi-shot, revolving firearm. The American firearm revolution had begun, and the great fucking of the world as we know it was thus completed.

It’s now the 21st century, and the modern world is split between two types of people: those who eat shit and die from it, and the elite few who rise above and change the world. The only things that separate them are a Gun, a Purpose, and a few billion Bullets, and if you haven’t figured out which side holds them, then you’re probably one of the shit-eaters, too.

Or is that a gun I see in your hand?

Get ready to change the world, one bullet at a time.

I want B&BoB to be game of high-tension bullet-hell gunfights. Your character starts the game with a gun, a purpose, a secret fate, and a countdown to their demise. It’s mostly based upon the core Showdown System mechanics of Cannibal Contagion, but takes them to a new step in their evolution. I’m unsure if the two systems will be ultimately interchangeable, but it is definitely an item on my design scheme.

I’ll be posting some backlogs of my recent dev journals in the coming days, as well as new ones as my work progresses. It is my intention to be more open with the design process and my ideas, and hopefully by sharing them I can in turn receive some helpful input. As the two games are intentionally very similar, my posts will frequently reference Cannibal Contagion, and a lot of my insights behind that game will come out as well. Please, comment on them and let me know what you think.

- NPC

Tanks to Craig Brown of Historic Tattoo here in Portland, I acquired two new tattoos this past Saturday afternoon. Bonus Points to all who recognize the quotes:

I started re-reading Neuromancer last night for my first ever re-read. I’d forgotten how just plain good this book is. My original goal was to get myself back in the cyberpunk mindset for my new Shadowrun Monday-night game, but after only a page in I had become truly immersed in the prose all for the sake of its own qualities. Gibson is one helluva phrase-turner, to say the least. To this day, Neuromancer has the single most memorable opening line out of every book I’ve ever read (see post title)*. Every time I think of this book and those that followed it, that opening line resonates in my brain, spoken by Ron Perlman in the same style as the famous opening lines to every Fallout game. While I personally feel that the Bridge Trilogy was a better-written series than the Cyberpunk trilogy, Neuromancer still stands out in my memory as one of the best and most original books I’ve ever read. The re-read is highly enjoyable so far. Read more

Aaron from the Geek in the City Podcast peruses a copy of Cannibal Contagion, shortly before playing in a fantastically hilarious session of the game. “Richard Thruster” will forever be in the annals of Cannibal Contagion fame, Aaron. Thanks for playing!

(original picture source here)

I’d like to take a moment to pimp out a site that my wonderful roommate Veira threw together, which I’m helping her support. It’s a web community based around Survival Horror games (and, of all thanks, Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden), called Survival Whore. In the works is a tool for submitting walkthrough, screenshots, capture vids and more. We’re turning our Dead Space and Resident Evil 5 walkthroughs and videos into an interactive section, and we’re hoping to soon add more for more games.

In fact, I’m planning on moving all of my video gaming blog posts to that site, to help generate some traffic and content. Here’s my blog, drop over and say hello. And join the forums too.

That is all!

A pal of mine requested that I transform the song “Hey Ya” by Outkast into an epic love ballad.

Here’s the result.

I have a feeling that only one person other than myself will find this amusing.

Okay! Several folks here and elsewhere have asked me how they might attain copies of Cannibal Contagion, either hardcopy or digitally, without having to arrange a pickup from me directly within town. Here are the answers.

Go here! You can find links to both the hardcopy order AND the PDF order. I personally fulfill all orders of both the book and the PDF, and this method also gives me the most direct profit.

If you simply MUST use Drive-Thru RPG, then here’s the page for the CC PDF. I only get 65% of the cost of those sales, but on the plus side there are spots there where you can leave user reviews.

Speaking of reviews… have you read and/or run and/or played it? Post some reviews! I’ll love you forever and buy you beer.

Tomorrow I’ll be sending a review copy to IPR, as well. *crosses fingers*

So I cross-posted my Jesus Camp Massacre Ap thread to a few other locations, for purposes both of promotion (duh) and to spread the word of the greatest gaming session I’ve ever run in my entire life. One place I was certain would love it is the forum for Fear the Boot, one of my long-time favoritest gaming podcasts ever. I disagree with about half of what they say (such as one of their design episodes wherein they said “stat + kill” systems were the best because they always worked, or some such), but they’re consistently hilarious, and they tend to be a bit over-the-top with their own offensive jabs at, well, just about everything.

So I posted it here, and the responses were unanimously positive. Unexpectedly, the moderator (Chad, who is known by all to be the most offensive, outspoken, loud-mouthed, and proudly controversial of all the show’s hosts) stepped in and locked the thread due to “numerous complaints” about its offensive nature. For a podcast with such a tongue-in-cheek approach to such subjects, this really, really surprised me – amused me, even. How ironic.

So I responded:

I’m more amused by your locking of the thread than anything else. You’re one of the most offensive people on the FtB podcast, admittedly so. I’ve heard you say things on there and especially on the Bonus Episodes that would make sailors blush. Yet those episodes are freely available for the downloading of anyone and everyone, and people can even freely comment on them.

But I try to share some obviously tongue-in-cheek gaming fun with my fellow ‘Booters – people that I know from experience and many days of listening to the podcasts are thick-skinned and can handle this style of humor – and it gets locked for poking fun at religion?

No, not upset at all, just highly amused at the sheer irony of the situation. Ah well, it’s your board, do as you want.

But after thinking on it some more, it all made sense: Chad’s just jealous at how motherfucking awesome that session was. I’m sorry, Everyone Else On Earth, that your own games just pale in comparison to the One True Game that was the Jesus Camp Massacre.

Keep the Faith, everyone!

- NPC

These past two weekends, I had the good fortune to play in several sessions of a godsbedamned fantastic board game called Last Night on Earth. I’ve been told by a handful of people that this game went out of print, but everyone and their undead grandmother seems to be getting brand new copies of it lately, so I’m unsure if that scarcity is in fact true. Either way, come hell or high water, I’m getting myself a copy of this.

I first got to play it at Guardian Games last weekend during the May of the Dead zombie celebrations. I only managed to get int a couple of turns, because I was busy dealing with Cannibal Contagion and socializing with a lot of awesome new people. But the few turns I did play quickly seduced me into wanting more.

An old gaming buddy of mine was in town this very past weekend, and we all met up at a friend’s house last night for an evening of beer and board games. As a nice stroke of good fortune, someone showed up with this game in tow, and we got in two good six-player sessions of it before I had to leave. There was a lot of stumbling here and there as we got used to some of the more specific rules, but for the most part, everyone took to the game very easily and we all had a blast. I figured I would take some time today and write up a review-like post on my experiences. Read more