2015-04-02 : Four Years' Abandoned Games
I was tidying up my archives here, and I thought it might be fun to show you what it looks like inside my notebook, as it were.
Since Apocalypse World, I've finished and published 4 games:
Midsummer Wood.
Murderous Ghosts.
Spin the Beetle.
The Sundered Land.
And I've started and abandoned or stalled out on 32:
22 Spells. Parts of this game survive in Freebooting Venus.
*AW:Dark Age. Which may yet see completion.
Bedlam Beautiful. An appalling game.
*Can You Save Your Boyfriend From the Cannibals? A trauma game.
Chipset. Fun and lively SF. "Homicide is deprecated."
Dead & Kicking. Another game about saving your boyfriend from cannibals, but not a trauma game.
*The Dragon. A trauma game.
*Dropship Eden. A trauma game.
Drowning. A single-character adventure game.
*Earth2 (with Tovey Baker). A tabletop rpg in a side-scrolling world.
The Ecclesium. Grappling with Ars Magica, as always.
The Forbidden World. Blood and sorcery.
Freebooting Hell. Planetary exploration SF.
Freebooting the Kaliste. The early career of Rock of Tahamaat.
The Ghost Engine. Sulphurpunk mecha roleplaying.
Hungry. After Hungry, Desperate and Alone.
*Into Darkness. Becoming a monster by fighting monsters.
*Knife and Candle (with John Harper and Failbetter Games).
The Labyrinth of Doors. Still grappling with Ars Magica.
The Last Good Night. The Mist, Cloverfield, War of the Worlds.
The Last Possible Future. Near-future SF in the death grip of the present.
Last Hour. One of the characters is having a nightmare.
A Prince of Harashad. Parts of this game survive in Freebooting Venus too.
*Quest of Doom / The Dead King's Quest. A secretly brilliant game I should really finish.
Rage of Kings. AKA The Impotent Rage of Idiot-kings. A precursor to AW:Dark Age.
Skin Jobs. Obviously Bladerunner-esque.
Swords in Darkness. Hellboy-esque. Rendered unnecessary by Monster of the Week.
*Untitled Swashbuckling Romance Game. The best thing I've ever undertaken to create, as yet unfinished.
VIVID. A generic system.
Vulture Crew. Spaceship adventure SF.
War Pit Uprising. The still earlier career of Rock of Tahamaat.
World of Aahm. Kids' magical adventure.
I've playtested all the games marked with *. Some got just a quick try at the dining room table, but others got many sessions, and a couple of them got a public or semi-public playtest release.
Oh and lest I fail to mention it, I'm currently working on just 3 games:
Freebooting Venus.
The Sea Throne.
[Undisclosed].
1. On 2015-04-02, Weeks said:
Abandoned is when you've decided there's nowhere to go with it? What's stalled? Was Storming the Wizard's Tower dropped before AW?
2. On 2015-04-02, Vincent said:
Abandoned or stalled, stalled or abandoned, who knows! Any of these games would still be worth making, if I found myself making them. They each hit some little or big speedbump or rough patch. Some of them, I didn't know how to see them over it, and others, I just didn't feel like putting in the work that day and now it's two years later or however long.
I didn't declare Storming the Wizard's Tower dead until after I'd published Apocalypse World, but I stopped working on it some time before.
3. On 2015-04-02, Marhault said:
Want.
4. On 2015-04-02, Ben Lehman said:
That's a pretty good production rate!
5. On 2015-04-02, Davide said:
That Untitled Swashbuckling etc. is sitting in the back of my head since you spoke about it at etruscon (italy) last summer...
I was way too tired for my brain to respond properly to it in that moment (how do you find the energy to talk about RPGs so late in the night after playing all day, I don't know!!)... but I am still curious as hell to see what you're going to get out of it.
And a part of me wants to send you my pitiful stuff and say: "Look what I did with what you told me!"
6. On 2015-04-02, anna said:
more info on boyfriends and cannibals please
7. On 2015-04-02, Jesse Burneko said:
Vincent, did you ever post anywhere exactly what a "trauma game" is?
8. On 2015-04-03, Moreno R. said:
Vincent, when you will stop stalling and finally fix Ars Magica? I need that game!
9. On 2015-04-03, Nicolas said:
First of all, hey, i'm new. Hey! Hey.
Vincent, do you ever find that a game complete dead end, impossible to design, an idea that cannot work? How do you know?
Do you ever look back at an old abandoned game that was once beyond your abilities and realize you now have the chops to design it?
10. On 2015-04-03, Skavenloft said:
So I am not the only one who do that :D
11. On 2015-04-03, PaulCzege said:
Can you imagine ever back-burnering a game because the world just isn't ready for it?
This makes...
JB go "What does that even mean?"
12. On 2015-04-06, jackie said:
You should finish knife and candle someday!!! it was almost there man!
13. On 2015-04-06, Vincent said:
Sadly, the difference between "almost there" and "done" is that "almost there" means "impossible."
This makes...
JB go "I really hope that's a very personal definition of "almost there.""
14. On 2015-04-06, Vincent said:
Anna: I dunno, there's just something about saving your boyfriend from cannibals that speaks to me.
In Can You Save Your Boyfriend From the Cannibals, they were drilling the geothermic well here in Greenfield MA for the renovations on Bank Row and they hit a pocket of something deep underground, released it into the air. Now, just hours later, Greenfield has become a cannibal hellscape. You have to get from the Bickford's out past the rotary up into town. Your boyfriend's working on his thesis in the public library's tiny antiquarian records room and probably has no idea what's going on, and you have to get to him before the cannibals do.
This sounds SO FUN to me.
This makes...
SDM go "Sounds fun to me too!"
AD go "Can we get this as a short film?"*
*click in for more
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