not falling down

Anybody have any idea why something at IBM’s Almaden Research Center crawled my site for 2400 pages yesterday? Are they building a search engine? Or being haxxored?

Maybe they want to hire me!

(Two minutes later: Oh wait.)

Hmm.

I can do better.

I chose the last one, predictably. You can read more about the pieces showing up in my brain over at its Iron Game Chef forum thread. Read some of the other stuff there, too–The Dinner Party, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, City of the Moon and Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom all look fantastic to me (you can already see preview PDFs of the former two).

Also, man, I’d forgotten what playing frisbee does to your fingernails!

Okay, guys, Cialis soft tabs are not new anymore.

HA HA HA HA HA

So I already put my bragging rights at stake in the Iron Game Chef contest, which means I need to design a game. This year involves not only the standard time limit and ingredient requirements, but a set of rules limitations as well. It’s a timed constrained game writing exercise! It’s a good thing those all make me gasp with excitement, because I’ve only got six days left and I haven’t so much “started.”

So here’s where I’m thinking of going. This isn’t an opinion poll–I’m going to make the game that I believe in the most; I just want to have a sketch-record in case I come back to some of these later. You’re welcome to steal anything here and make your own game, of course.

• Enemy of the People: Two groups of players work in tandem, able to communicate only via a shared map. One plays a group of Navajo scouts in 1360 AD, the other a modern-day group of archaeologists, both trying to unravel the mystery of the abandonment of Mesa Verde–the former group via the spirit world, the latter via science. The game is played on a strict time limit, because once the sun goes down, the mystery starts to reveal itself in a supernatural, lethal fashion…

  Ingredients: Anasazi disappearance, 1300s. “Entomology,” “Accuser” and “Companion.” Multi-meaning die rolls and pregenerated characters.

  Problems: Huge and clunky. Not sure I can do this without a very coordinated pair of GMs, which I don’t want.

• We Are Rock Stars: 1998, California. Brilliant geeks search for identity and social acceptance while struggling not to let their offbeat interweb startup get washed away in the tide of venture capital–or see the tide recede.

  Ingredients: Dot-com boom, late 1990s. “Entomology,” “Wine” and “Invincible.” Multi-meaning die rolls.

  Problems: InSpectres probably does this as a subsystem, and better.

• Alexandretta: Merchant caravans roam the highways and seaways of a young and exotic island empire, racing to clinch deals, watching (and affecting) the wash of supply and demand to maximize their profits.

  Ingredients: Loosely based on the heyday of the Silk Road. “Wine,” “Companion” and “Accuser.” Color-based resolution and custom card deck.

  Problems: I don’t know anything about economics. Also, not sure this is actually a role-playing game.

• Welcome to the New World: Accused criminals are denied trials and sentenced to hard labor at a lunar prison colony where all light is blue, and visible colors a jealously guarded luxury. The prisoners’ desperate secret is that only they can produce the physically inexplicable property of color–and only by their suffering and death. Lethal, oppressive horror.

  Ingredients: “Wine,” “Companion” and “Accuser.” Color-based resolution, obviously. Historical basis: pick one.

  Problems: I’m not sure I have the balls for this, and I don’t know anybody who would actually want to play it.

I’m kind of scaring myself, right now, by leaning toward the last one. I’ll pick for real tonight.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

In some genres there’s never really a question of whether the protagonist will get what she wants. Stories are often about emotional fulfillment, after all, so when you start watching (say) a romantic comedy, you’re not really wondering whether they’ll end up together. You’re wondering what it will cost.

I asked myself: What does it cost?

• A finger
• Your innocence
• Fifty cents
• Your honor
• Your life

Wanna see how?

The Good Girls

An Anacrusis Exclusive

Starting Monday

HIGH FIVE, AMERICA

Hey, that was a pretty good movie!