I Am Made of Win!

I entered a raffle contest from my favorite local radio station last week. From the title of this post you can guess what happened. I won something! Something kinda big and wicked cool. Actually I won a couple of things: organic cotton bedding, a wool comforter, and best of all, a Raleigh hybrid comfort bike.

Two years ago I won 4 tickets to the Vermont Renaissance Festival from the same radio station. That time I had to guess the current event correlation between three songs. They all somehow related to George W. Bush taking the prime minister of Japan to Graceland. That was a natural for me. I'm from Memphis, I was an exchange student in Japan, and, um, when I lived in Memphis, George Herbert Walker Bush came to my high school and I got to ask him a question. Okay, so the latter was a stretch there.

Basically, I won 4 tickets (a $40 value) for keeping up with current events. This time around, I won some things (I'm guessing close to an $800 value) for knowing my name, phone number, having an email address, and knowing what town I live in. Quite simply, I am made of win.

The Sun Doesn't Set on Our Love

Another playtest of Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. This time we had 4 players, and it rocked. I'd eventually like to try it with 3 players, and I'm pretty confident that it would work. I tested new card mechanics and they worked much better. I'm still not confident about the final scene play, but it could be just insecurity. We created a great story and had fun, and that's most important to me for now.

I'm going to shelve my plans to make M'Alice an ashcan by August and focus on Fisherman's Wife.

He're a quick synopsis of our game. Emily was the Fisherman, Vincent the wife, I was the Fisherman's demons, and Meg was the Wife's demons.

Act I: The Fisherman leaves for his trip. His wife packs him rice balls with little surprises in each one. After drawing clubs, the Wife reports that she has mended 3 nets for him, and his boat is big. After drawing spades, the Fisherman tells is wife he will be gone 4 days and he has a premonition that he will lose something to the sea.

Their 6 words--The Fisherman to the Wife: "The sun doesn't set on our love."

To the Fisherman: "Turtles come alive under the moon."

Act II: The Wife encountered 3 different demons and she prevailed over all three. Sort of. The first one was a spider demon who wanted to serve her. I can't remember what she wanted from it. But at the end of the first scene, the Wife had a new little servant, who helped her around the house. The second demon wanted to seduce her, and she wanted to merge with it or steal its power, which she did. She turned it into a comb for her hair. The third demon wanted to devour her beauty. The Wife destroyed her, if I recall correctly and did away with her quickly.

Cut to Act III: The Fisherman met a demon who wanted to devour him, but the Fisherman would have no part of it. It was a creepy eel looking thing, the Fisherman prevailed. For the next three scenes, the Fisherman met the same demon, who alternated between wanting to seduce and devour the Fisherman. The Fisherman seduced the demon, and to keep from being eaten, successfully seduced her again.

So the Fisherman brought a seductive water demon home from his fishing trip. You might guess what he lost at sea.

Act IV: Meg played the industrious spider demon who now served the Wife, I played the seductive water demon, and we played in teams, demons vs. humans. The thing is, we both drew the seduction suit. So the question was, who would seduce whom. In the end, the humans won. Now that the wife had the power to breathe underwater, she could go swimming with the water demon.

They all lived happily ever after. Sort of. The Wife told the tale about how the sun did in fact set on their love, and related it back to the Fisherman's behavior with the water demon.

My memory is sketchy, and I've forgotten some details, but this game was terribly fun. Other players, please chime in!

(Cross posted at the Forge, typos and bad syntax and all.)

Clam produces an enchanted pearl of cinnabar

Last night Meg and I played Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. I have a few mechanical kinks to work out, and as I mentioned before the end is really clunky, but we had fun, and told a hilarious story complete with sex with giant fish and kelp men.

Act 1
The story begins with the Fisherman preparing for his journey. I was the Fisherman, Meg was the Wife. The Fisherman asks "How many nets have you mended and what is the condition of my boat?" Meg draws a Spade (can't remember the number) and says, "Four nets and I have made sure your boat is in tip top shape. And here's your lunch!"

The Wife asks how many days would the Fisherman be gone. I draw a Diamond card. "Two days, and because you have mended so many of my nets, I predict my baskets will overflow with fish."

They leave each other with the following 6 words. To the Wife: "Clam produces an enchanted pearl of cinnabar."

To the Fisherman: "Moon makes a silver necklace for a lady."

[Note: Articles, i.e. "that", "an", and "a" don't count in the 6 words.]

So off the Fisherman goes.

Act II
The Wife tends to their kelp drying business (they sell nori.) I'm playing the demon now. I draw a 10 of Clubs ("Devour"), Meg draws the 5 of Diamonds ("Enslave"). The demon approaches the Wife first as a giant piece of seaweed. They exchange witty barbs back and forth (ex, "I want to have you for dinner"), and when we get to the final card, the kelp demon transforms into a handsome man, and declares that he wants to "devour" the Wife, but not in a food way. I have the high card for Clubs. But Meg as the high card for Diamonds. The first round ends up in a tie. The kelp demon devours the Wife in a conjugal way, and is her slave for the night.

The next day (Scene 2) the kelp demon returns. This time he wants to Possess (Spades) the Wife. The Wife wants to "Steal a Power" (Clubs). Meg wins this round. She is immune to his charms, and at the last minute she steals a shell from his hair and gains the power to summon water creatures. Dejected, the kelp demon turns back into kelp and floats away.

Act III
(Scene 1) I now play the Fisherman, and Meg plays the demon. I draw a Heart (Seduce), and Meg draws a Diamond (Serve). Fisherman discovers a giant golden fish in his net. Immediately he is smitten. He places her in a giant tank and woos her, while she offers to serve him. I win this round, and the Fisherman seduces the fish demon. Yup, while she's still a fish.

(Scene 2)
The demon returns, this time to Possess (Spades). The Fisherman wants to Seduce (Hearts) her again. This time she changes into the form of a woman with glistening scales. Now the demon has 4 chances (4 Scenes) to succeed, since the Fisherman has 4 nets. And in the end, Meg and I both had the high card, but the Ace of Spades is the unbeatable card. When played by the demon it becomes "Supplant", and when played by a human it is "Destroy". So the Fisherman is supplanted. The fish demon controls him outside his body with strings like a marionette. They return home early.

Act IV
The Wife suspects something, and the fish demon knows her brother the kelp demon has been consorting with the Wife. The fish demon was going to try to Enslave the Wife, and the Wife was going to try to Destroy (Ace of Spades) the fish demon. The end game mechanics need some work, so we just fudged it. The Wife tries to save the Fisherman from the clutches of the fish demon by using her new power to summon water creatures. She calls on crabs to try to clip the strings that bind her husband to the fish demon. In the end, the fish demon strikes a bargain with the Wife. If she takes the Fisherman with her back to the sea, she'll call her brother back to become the Wife's lover. The Wife was happy with that, especially when reminded that kelp can grow up to 2 feet a day.

The Fisherman asks his Wife to tell him a story with the 6 words before they part forever. She tells the cautionary tale of how a clam fell in love with a bird, and out of love and from a piece of wood, the clam produced a beautiful pearl of cinnabar. The bird died, the clam died, and that's all the Wife had to say about inter-species love affairs.

The kelp demon returns, the fish demon gets her man, and they all live reasonably happily ever after.

There are a few mechanics I want to change, but as it is, it's playable and definitely fun. It's a short game, and playable with 3 and 4 players. The end game needs the most work. I'm going to take the rules down for a day or two while I make the first round of changes. Chris and I are going to play it tonight and see how it goes.

First Draft! Tales of the Fisherman's Wife

Wow! That was fast. I love it when I have an idea and it just flows to completion. I wrote the rules for Tales of the Fisherman's Wife last night, and even got it from notebook to computer. Print and play it and tell me what you think. The final act is a little loose and needs work, and there are parts where play might be a little clunky, so please give me some feedback. I got rid of the d4's and use cards only for the whole game. D4's are too pointy to play with in bed.

Some feedback questions:
Is play long enough or too long?
How do the cards aid in narration?
What really works? What did you love about it?
What's confusing? What totally doesn't work?
What needs work? What needs explaining?
What would you be sad about if I changed it?
Anything else you'd like to say.

The pdf isn't here any more. The game is almost finished. I'm putting together the books for GenCon. See you then!

Enjoy!

Reminder: Pirates are not funny

Two posts in one day may seem a little excessive, but since I have formally adopted "Pirate Queen" as my self-referential title, I couldn't help but share. Besides, I thought this would be interesting to those who know why someone once called me the Pirate Queen. Some of these folks probably know that I think highwaymen are "cooler", but that's irrelevant. I'm the Pirate Queen. (In rpg's) I didn't quite make it as the Highway Robber Queen, but I kicked ass as the Pirate Queen.

Still, I find the storybook, role playing game, and folk tale pirates quite entertaining, and do so delight in telling their tales, even if when they're horrible. The real life thing is an entirely different creature. One who is NOT funny.

We should be concerned that pirate attacks rose 10% in 2007. Yo ho ho...No thanks.

Even still, I have to ask: What would Abyssinia do?

Mission Statement Mission

In the past couple of years, I have committed a great deal of time and money to playing and designing role playing games. I'm getting to the point where the hobby pays for itself financially and I've received significant personal, social, and creative returns. So for now I'm getting what I put in. It can't hurt to ask occasionally, why make the investment, and to ask when the investment makes a positive impact on one's life.

There's an interesting conversation on Story Games on using cards (vs. dice) in role-playing games. It's prompted me to consider why I decided to write a role playing game, what keeps me interested in designing role playing games, and who is the audience I'm trying to reach with my games. So I'll ask my third question first.

I want to make games that would attract people who aren't Role Playing Gamers, in the traditional or "indie" sense. RPG's can be fun for people who hate TV, people who like board, card, or dice games, storytellers, folksingers. I would like for these people who don't come from an RPG background to bring what they like about story (or game) and play.

I think about how long it took me to actually play a role playing game, from the time I was first interested (elementary school), to when I first bought one (late 20's), to when I actually played one (a few years later). The things that kept me from jumping in when I was a kid were much different from the things that prevented me when I was an adult. As an adult, it was time, money, and stories to be told didn't grab me.

What I did like was the possibility to hang out with friends, not watch tv, and tell stories. I think those are attractive endeavors to more than just Role Players. So I want to make games that tell stories that perhaps you already know (like folk tales and myths), but you tell them at a different angle, with a different conclusion, different middle, or you bring in characters that don't have a great voice in the original telling, but could.

Also, the time thing. With two kids and full time job, my game time is quite limited. I won't rule out making a game that could go on for months or years, but I like the idea of shorter, single or multi-session games, so you get the satisfaction of a conclusion. This is a conversation I need to continue with myself.

Here's why I included the octopus picture: The Octopus Dating Game.

What are you looking at?

He who won't speak to me, but spends an astounding amount of time reading my blog? It's a little stalkish. I feel hainted.

Yeah, I've been looking at my visitor stats lately. I still don't get all the people who come here looking for "naked sauna" entries.

At this blog, I mostly talk about my kids, my hair, role playing games, both playing and designing (Steal Away Jordan, Murder Ballad Blackjack, M'Alice, and now Tales of the Fisherman's Wife), tattoos, Japan, food, creepy dolls, murder ballads, and autoharps. I haven't been in a sauna in months, although I really miss it.

The internet is not a reasonable facsimile of me. It's more like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. But if you must know some minutia of my life, Meg trimmed my hair the other day, so now it doesn't fall in the toilet and I don't sit on it any more. It looks much neater.

I strongly encourage people to leave non-spammy comments. If you stop by, sign the guest book!

Sincerely,
Parthenia, aka The Pirate Queen