An Overview of Shifters

It has been a very crazy couple of weeks. I haven't posted according to the schedule in some time. But at least I've got the beta playtest draught of Shifters ready to go. So this week, I thought I'd give you a quick overview of how the game works.

Characters have five primary attributes:

• Strength: An overall measure of physical sturdiness, covering body mass, lifting and carrying capacity, health, endurance, damage capability, etc.
• Agility: A rating of flexibility and co-ordination, which includes the basis for most physical skills and proficiency in weapon use and combat.
• Reason: A description of general mental capacity, including logical thinking and rational cognition. It doesn't cover knowledge, though.
• Psyche: This is the attribute that covers what you know (rather than the ability to use what you know in a logical manner). Also governs social ability.
• Essence: This is the supernatural ability. It covers willpower, but also ability to use magic, psionics, and most superpowers, as well as resistance to these.

Each is rated from 2 to 10. The ratings are then subtracted from 12, to give you that attribute's target number (thus, if you had a Reason of 7, your Reason Target Number is 5). You purchase levels in attributes using Character Creation Points (CCPs), with each level in an attribute costing 5 CCPs. Normally, you start the game with 150 CCPs, but the GM may alter this depending on what sort of game he's running.

Shifters Ready for Playtesting

I have mentioned here before that I am working on creating a new roleplaying game. It is finally ready for playtesting.

I have created a pdf of the beta-version rules set. I illustrated it myself, because I couldn't find anyone else to do it. Which means that the illustrations are crappy beyond belief. Some of them are photoshopped photographs, others are tracings of photographs done with pencil (some of which are finished in ink, others not). A couple of them are, in essence, completely brazenly stolen. I justify this theft with the fact that this is only a beta playtest version; if playtest goes well and results in a workable product, I will probably try to put this game on Kickstarter. If successful, one of the things I plan to include in the budget is paying for a professional illustrator (or possibly more than one). Every illustration I made will be discarded, the layout will be finalised and made more pleasant, and real actual honest-to-goodness illustrations will be included.

Exciting news!

I'm on holiday at the moment, so this one's going to be a short one. But there is some exciting news, and I felt I just had to share.
Remember a couple months ago, when I was talking about board game cafes? I believe I said, 'I don't know how feasible this idea would be, but it's fun to dream!'

Well, it turns out I was not alone in wishing for this. A kickstarter just went live for a group wanting to open a board game cafe right here in my own current home town!

They've had a couple of board game events at the local public library, so I've been able to play with them. They seem like really nice people, and I'm very much looking forward to helping them get off the ground. I know I'll be pledging, and I'd really appreciate it if you'd head over to their Kickstarter page and pledge something too!

Sadly, most of their reward packages will only be of use to people who live in or near this city, but there are a couple that may appeal to anyone, regardless of location. I'm certain the fine folks behind Loot & XP will appreciate your support. And I know I will!

That's all for this week. I'll see you back here next time, and until then,

Game on!

Asphodel under way!

I know I didn't post this last weekend, and if things keep on the way they have been, I fear I may not get to post again this coming weekend either.

I'm sorry. Summer has thus far been crazier than it should be. I promise I'll get to some more posting at some point in the future.

For now, though, I want to make sure everyone is aware that the Kickstarter is live for Asphodel. I guarantee, if you get a copy of the game, you'll love it. Do a guy a favour and head over to the Asphodel Kickstarter page and back it. There's just over a week left, and there's still aways to go!

Thanks so much! Until next time,

Game on!

Your input needed for the direction of this blog

As I mentioned last week, I've been getting a fair amount of traffic from around the world. But one thing I've noticed is that, by far, the posts that are getting the most views are the Board Game Reviews. I've published 85 entries in this blog so far (this entry is number 86).

Entries	Number of entries	Percentage of total entries	Number of views	Percentage of views
Total Entries	85	100%	2201	100%
Board Game Reviews	19	22.4%	1647	74.8%
Other entries	66	77.6%	554	25.2%

Anyone can see that there is clearly a massive disparity there. Obviously, people are coming to my blog for the board game reviews (interesting note: so far, my review of Storming the Castle has the most views, with 358, followed by Anima: Shadow of Omega with 340, then Three Musketeers: The Queen's Pendants at 221). Not many people seem to care about my other entries (the largest page views on the non-Board Game Review entries are the ones I wrote about new GURPS divination spells (part 1 had 38 views, and part 2 had 121).

So my question for you good people is this: Should I stick to writing only board game reviews? Or do you think I should keep doing what I'm doing and let the traffic go where it will regardless of what I'm writing?

Please leave your response in the comment section below. I'm really looking forward to hearing what you lovely people have to say!

Until next week,

Game on!

My Game In Progress

I've mentioned here before that I'm working on writing a roleplaying game. I think it's high time I talked about that.

I'm actually working on two games. They use the same system; I started writing Shifters and then realised that the system worked really well for an RPG set in the Tron universe. So I've begun adapting the rules for a game called The Grid.

I got the idea for Shifters when playing with a group that would cycle through GMs; one GM would run a game, then another GM would take over and run a different game. We played Changeling a lot, and one of the games was a crossover of Mage: The Ascension and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Several of the players in that group were new to gaming, and there was talk of introducing them to a lot of different RPGs. I found myself worrying about the fact that every time we switched to a new genre, we'd have to teach them a new system and spend time creating new characters. Even if we'd used a universal system like GURPS, we'd still have to make new characters every time we switched genres.