I had a great time in Norrköping last week playing games at The Happening. This both inspired me to revisit old games and got my head bubbling with new ideas. You easily forget how amazing it is to play games with new and old friends face to face. Screens are good for many things but can’t recreate the experience of playing IRL.
I ran The City for four players and played Death of Rapacus while four players played Clemency. In between I pitched Petroglyph and Draw Stranger, excellent filler card games.
Ron insisted that we play games we haven’t played before so I played in a sci-fi heist that Gregor Hutton game mastered using some obscure 1990s TTRPG system with exploding dice and cards. Gregor Hutton designed and published 3:16 and is an all round nice guy visiting from Edinburgh. Before, during, and after we had great talks about game design and indie game publishing.
I have never played a super heroes game. I was about to jump into one run by Ron but the group playing Death of Rapacus needed a fourth player so I changed just as we were starting up. I will be back for The Happening next year, I like the laid back format. Maybe then I get to be a super hero.
The City
The City is a steampunk drama about the choices we make to fit in. This was the fourth time running it and it was a good run with great player input. Pontus in particular had a great character downfall, all going back to his choice in the very first chapter.
The City is a more scripted and harder framed than other of my games and it requires a game master to run to keep track of the characters and relations. The payoff is worth it; you get to squeeze each of the four main characters into hard choices and to play out the consequences of their choices, both for themselves and for the city.
As I reread the text I found things I wanted to elaborate on and things I wanted to tighten up. So I did an editing pass and re-published The City on Thoughtful Dane and RPG Trader this week. If you have bought a previous version of the game or if you have played in one of the playtests, reach out and I will send you a free copy of the latest version.
The game needs six white tokens and six black tokens that you pull from a bag during the game. The colour of the token decides how the narrative unfolds. This time I cut 12 cogwheels from 3mm acrylic. This inspired me to create a physical copy of the game to sell. So I’m looking into running a crowdfunding campaign next year to finance a print run with great illustrations by Claudia.
Death of Rapacus
More people should play Death of Rapacus! It’s silly and fun; you play bickering and scheming wizards in a Medieval Mythic Europe that duel disagreements out with improvised magic duels. It’s PvP improvised with dice. Each wizard has a secret (one of them killed Rapacus their leader). But it’s fun to reveal them and you get to decide how and when and when you do they give you an advantage. The dice system rewards players for re-incorporating contributions by other players. My fellow players quickly got the hang of it and we had a great time with many memorable duels and plot twists.
Besides running Death of Rapacus on LinCon the last three years, I have never really promoted the game. As I have lots of great art by Claudia, I should do this. I still think it is harder to make a business selling physical copies of roleplaying games than card games or PDFs, but I will give it a try. A small print run from Lulu beefed up with pins and dice and mugs to bring when I travel.
Petroglyph
Petroglyph is my 17-card micro game with Bronze Age rock art. The game is both a fun game and a great souvenir and I want museum shops near rock art sites to sell it. The museum at Nämforsen bought into the idea. The game is also on the shelves in Dragon’s Lair in Stockholm.
I’m working with the museum in Norrköping to create a version using only local rock art. I went down to Norrköping again this week and talked with the shop manager and an archeologist. We have communicated by email so far but it is so much better when you can meet face to face and talk things through. Let’s see how soon we can get a Petroglyph Norrköping edition ready.
I printed just under 200 copies of Petroglyph and have sold enough to validate the idea. People I play the game with buy a copy more often than not. Even better, Petroglyph has also been purchased from the shelves at Hågelby and Dragon’s Lair, without me being present. What’s nice about micro games is that I can finance a small print run without risking the family fortune. Then somewhere down the line I can get a little income from doing something I enjoy doing. And maybe one day one game will turn out to be a smash hit that will fund my retirement.
Spooky Town
Halloween is coming and Spooky Town isn’t big enough for all its monsters! Scare away the competition and take over all the best places in town before all the little kids come out for trick-and-treat.
Finally I came up with a great theme for Nine Kingdoms, a game I came up with in February. Halloween is a great theme from a commercial point of view but it also works great with the stab-your-friends PvP feel of Nine Kingdoms. I reskinned actions and cards and simplified the rules and I’m very happy with the result.
Each round you play two cards from a hand of five. These are monsters you add to your posse or blood you add to your blood pile. If you have the most of one kind of monsters, you can take over one of nine scary places. Scary places give you special powers that help you win the game. If you play certain combinations of card you can discard or steal cards from your opponent. For example, a scarecrow and a bogeyman can frighten away a ghost while a scarecrow and a ghost can scare away a witch or a bogieman.
Next up is to playtest a lot with the new theme and to come up with a visual design. It’s 69 cards so harder to self publish and I’m thinking how to get the game out. It needs a tuck box and great art but should have great commercial potential with a wide audience. I could crowdfund or pitch to a publisher, maybe I will. But it could also be fun to run it as a community project at Folk Lab: People who show up for our Friday boardgame nights can draw the nine monsters and nine scary places. Then we can apply for a grant to fund a small print run of say 100 copies of the game to give away to people who helped create it. Tug boxes and first player tokens we can do on the laser cutter.
Gotlandia
I’ve playtested the digital version of Gotlandia a lot. This has been particularly useful to test the late game, how it feels. Gotland was hit by one calamity after the other in the 1300s: The Black Plague, invasions from east and west, and pirates making a base on Gotland. Gotlandia is a VP race where you build an engine to score you victory points at the end of each century. The last century your engine gets beaten up by calamities and the player best prepared for this usually turn out as the winner. But the timing needs to be right: If the game ends too soon, you will not have had time to see your engine working. If the game ends too late, you will run out of things to do to score victory points. The computer opponents are not hard to beat so I want to test a longer game with real players to see if I have achieved the right balance.
I have two planned sessions of Gotlandia: One at Folkets Hus in Hallunda on 3 October 13:00-17:00 and one at Smash Con in Huddinge on 15 November 13:00-17:00. I’ve set up a third session in Uppsala at Spelens Hus on 28 November 11:00-15:00. Reach out if you want to reserve a seat or just show up and see if there is room. I will bring two games so up to 8 people can play.
Thoughtful Dane on Tour
My next big milestone is first weekend in December where I will sell my games at a Christmas market north of Stockholm. I’m preparing what goods to sell and keeping an eye on making a net positive out of this while keeping things fun. I will do a little dry run at GameFest in Nyköping on 27 September where I will come down to play and sell Petroglyph and Draw Stranger.
Long update from me this time. I’m having lots of fun while not making much money. But ends meet and opportunities are plenty. So I’m optimistic and wish you all the best in pursuing — not money but — a joyful life shared with people you love and full of great moments to remember.
