Dungeon-obsessed

I'm suffering from dungeon-obsession right now. I catch it sometimes, like an intermittent fever.
Not that I'm interested in playing any old-school games or anything (alright, there's Tunnels & Trolls, there's Kata Kumbas… but playing any of those requires jumping through hoops I don't want to be through right now; this moment, even Jason Morningstar's incredibly streamlined and promising Dungeon Squad 2 looks a bit heavy on the "DM" side to me). Rather, I'm obsessed with the idea of designing some kind of game which will again make dungeons work for me — except I've been running circles around this particular idea for, I don't know, two years now?
I draft down bits and pieces of rules, but the whole thing never gels, and I start from scratch again. I've got multiple notebooks half-full of this stuff by now. Only one thing I nailed down for sure: I want the map of the dungeon to be in the middle of the table during play, visible to all (the full map, yes).
Which finally brings me to the reason I posted about this today… I think I just realized something about my obsession, which is: I'm primarily in love with the graphical representation of dungeons — with maps, especially if cute, hand-drawn and detailed. I should have known: that's why I follow Tony Dowler's sweet Year of the Dungeon to get my regular fix, for example. In fact, what triggered this untimely realization was probably learning about Paul Hughes's kickstarter project for a giant random dungeon poster-map (I sure like his drawing style, involvement with the Gary Gygax personality-cult notwithstanding). Or was it the One-Page Dungeon Contest launching?

Webites spawning other websites: picking a date to celebrate

Parti di Testa: Figli dell'Orgasmo Cerebrale (Children of a Braingasm) 

I've been working on this little thing, in very small installments, for a long time now. Most or all downloads linked from this blog are actually stored there since more than a year. Time I turn on the lights and show you all the front door, don't you think? 

I still consider it a work in progress, but really it's a collection of works in progress: thus I think it appropriate enough to "open" it now. So, it's just a simple website where I keep track of the things I write and keep those available for downloads: games, accessories, essays… A companion site for this blog, safe from the endemic chaos plaguing blogs. Everything you find there right now you could find either here or somewhere else already - I just made it easier for everybody to find, or so I hope.

  

Per i miei lettori italiani: ci sono anche le schede del personaggio di Kata Kumbas, l'articolo più scaricato (o l'unico?) dal mio blog precedente, se qualcuno ancor le cerca.

Baccanale scapigliato

Non è ancora finita! Imperterriti continuiamo a marciare, noi, i diavoli del carnevale.

Yes, I like to think I have this Key. So what?

Key of "You think you know me?" 
It happens all the time. Some player sitting 'round the table says to you: "Oh, man, and now you're so going to tag your Key of [Something] again because of this! Easy money!" (or variations). But in fact you…
1 XP = Can't tag your Key of Something, because it doesn't apply.
2 XPs= Don't have the Key of Something at all.
5 XPs= Can and do buy off your Key of Something right now.
Buyoff: They're right, your Key of Something applies and you tag it for 3 XPs or more.

Behold an awesome, awesome human being!

The awesome human being in question being Levi Kornelsen, who single-handedly and sorta-understatedly begun a feat worthy of a hero of the ages to come, deserving a huge badge of awesomeness.

Levi is developing a fantasy role-playing game, Awen, built on the bones of his long-time-in-development project "The Exchange", plus a set of new ideas he more recently came up with about "world creation" being a consequence of character creation, etc. Something like the latter is found in Apocalypse World, sure, but way less formalized, and Levi may well be the first after Vincent Baker to implement new tools toward that end, in a time when everybody seems content with making Apocalypse World hacks. But this is only half the story…

Like so many of us these days, Levi is running a crowd-funding campaign to fund the development of the game (in other words, to at least partially re-pay himself and/or any helpers of the hours spent working on the project). The big deal is: Awen will be released into the Public Domain as soon as it's completed. Thus, by pitching in your five or ten dollars you're not "buying a game", you're helping make a game for everyone in the world who may want to play it. And you're making a gift today to all of the friends you will ever want to play the game with, or pitch the game to — including those friends you haven't yet met.
Way to make Levi climb to the top of my personal chart of awesomeness.

Please, join in. Everybody who's reading this, please chip in the five bucks if you have those, but especially, please, tell all of your friends, and tell them to tell their friends — you know how that works.
My expectations regarding the game as a game are high enough, really, but even if they weren't I'd still be urging all of you to help Levi out. Because we're living on the edge of something huge. As small as it may look now, Levi is (marching in the front line and taking the risks) trying out a new model for artistic work: one more sustainable, more civilized than the rotting and rotten one we have today. I really think supporting Awen means to support change for the best, if just in this small, small world of ours which is role-playing games.
Thank you.

Il più indie di tutti i crowdfunding

Al via un mio nuovo, piccolo progetto. Il sito appositamente allestito dice già tutto, penso, perciò visitatelo:

animaprime.lapo.it

Why I'm not on Google+

Having a large number of friends — and not in the Facebook sense — I'm not surprised that I received several invitations to Google's new "social network", Google+. Instead of rushing headlong into it, though, I let those invitations rest for a while, while considering whether joining would actually do me any good.
I'm glad I was cautious. In almost no time, and with no effort on my part, I received enough off-putting, if unsurprising, news to decidedly make my mind.
Google+ terms of service and policy are as always geared towards the benefit and safety of Google, not my benefit and safety. They are explicitly sex-negative, even going so far as removing a specific exception for art nudes which was previously in place. They are chicken-hearted blanket statements meant to empower the company to arbitrarily disallow content on a case-by-case basis, which amounts to censorship. Cue the completely arbitrary ban of Anonymous. What does that remind me of? Oh, yeah…

Well, I'm not joining. I didn't resist joining Facebook for so long just to impulse-subscribe a service which is just the same, affected by just the same liabilities and involving just the same dangers. For the time being, I'll go on using the Status.net (specifically identi.ca) as my sole "social network" provider.
My connections — the real-life ones — are an asset to a company like Google, and what has Google done to merit me gifting them with my assets? My demands weren't that high either: just by doing nothing at all they'd have qualified as exceeding my expectations. But no, they censored content and people, instead.
I'm actually beginning to feel uncomfortable having my e-mail, blog and a couple in-development websites all hosted by Google: surrendering this much of myself to a company was a mistake. At the time, they looked like the safest of companies, but I was just young and naive: big business is big business, and in the end their friendly facade is crumbling and revealing the extent of the lie. I will go looking for alternatives. So, maybe I ought to thank Google+ for raising my awareness of the problem.

La colletta è stata un successo

Mi scuso innanzitutto, perché questo post sarebbe dovuto comparire due giorni fa, al momento in cui — nel pomeriggio del 29 giugno — l'obiettivo designato è stato raggiunto. Dovevamo raccogliere 800 euro entro il giorno 29, e infatti…

ABBIAMO RACCOLTO 830 €

per portare Ben Lehman a EtrusCon Estate 2011.

(un successo al 104%)

Grazie a:

Andrea, Antonio, Ariele, Barbara, Davide, Evelyn, Lapo, Lorenzo, Luca, Luca, Mario, Matteo, Mauro, Niccolò, Nicola, Paolo, Raffaele, Simone, Simone, Tazio, Teresa, Vittorio, Yves,

Associazione Culturale Janus e Hotel Royal Palace.

Ciascuno ha contribuito secondo le proprie possibilità e alcuni hanno dato tutto sé stessi per passione.

Un po' di statistiche, per soddisfare la vostra curiosità. Abbiamo ricevuto:

• 1 donazione generosissima di € 280
• 1 donazione "supporter" di € 100
• 1 donazione "platinum++" di € 50
• 4 donazioni "platinum" di € 30
• 2 donazioni "gold+" di € 25
• 7 donazioni "gold" di € 20
• 4 donazioni "silver+" di € 15
• 2 donazioni "silver" di € 10
• 2 donazioni "non ci perdi niente" di € 5

e l'hotel ha contribuito offrendo sconti a tutti ai donatori e ospitalità a Ben Lehman.

Ancora grazie a tutti, ma questa volta a titolo personale, da uno che spera in un mondo nel quale i giocatori si spostano e si incontrano cento volte di più — perché, lo credo sinceramente, confrontare esperienze diverse fa bene a noi e fa bene al gioco di ruolo.

Colletta per raccolta fondi: Ben Lehman a EtrusCon d'Estate

L'altra settimana qualcuno ha chiesto, in amicizia, a Ben Lehman (autore di Polaris, Bliss Stage, The Drifter's Escape): «Vieni a una convention in Italia?» E lui: «Mi piacerebbe, ma non ho una lira». Ne è nata una sfida: è possibile promuovere la mobilità dei giocatori e lo scambio d'esperienze internazionale con un'iniziativa finanziata dal basso?
Ben Lehman parteciperà all'edizione estiva di EtrusCon (29-31 luglio a Montecatini Terme, PT) se i partecipanti a EtrusCon riusciranno a pagargli l'80% circa del costo del biglietto aereo dagli Stati Uniti. Fate pure riferimento a me come organizzatore di questa colletta. Donazione libera, e nel caso il "target" non venga raggiunto il denaro sarà restituito (se avete mai finanziato un progetto su Kickstarter, per esempio, dovreste avere familiarità con questo metodo).
L'iniziativa è differente da quella degli "ospiti" a altre convention, innanzitutto perché nasce da un dialogo a distanza fra conoscenti senza la mediazione di un "editore", ma anche perché tutto si svolgerà alla luce del sole, con offerte libere e separatamente dalla gestione e organizzazione della convention. Tanto è vero che a organizzare materialmente la colletta sono io (ma l'impulso iniziale viene da Tazio "Suna" Bettin).
Ciò non significa che agli organizzatori di EtrusCon la cosa non importi, e infatti… Chiunque donerà almeno 5 € a questa iniziativa riceverà uno sconto di 5 € sulla partecipazione a EtrusCon (direttamente alla cassa dell'hotel).

Target: 800 € · Deadline: 29 Giugno

OBIETTIVO RAGGIUNTO!

 

Donazioni consigliate:
"Non ci perdi niente" → € 5
"Silver" → € 10
"Gold" → € 20
"Platinum" → € 30
"Supporter" (per associazioni o case editrici) → € 100

Per evitare disguidi, debbo (purtroppo) raccogliere anticipatamente il denaro.

• Se desiderate contribuire, scrivetemi una e-mail all'indirizzo raffaele.manzo@gmail.com e vi invierò i miei dati bancari a cui effettuare un bonifico.
• Periodicamente controllerò i bonifici ricevuti, vi invierò una mail di conferma di ricezione e darò pubblicamente notizia dell'andamento della colletta.
• Se non avete la possibilità di effettuare un bonifico, o l'operazione vi risulta costosa, ma siete utenti di PayPal, allora potete fare un trasferimento privato di denaro direttamente sul mio account PayPal: raffaele.manzo@gmail.com. Tenete presente che se però pagate con una carta (cioè, in pratica, sempre, a meno che non abbiate credito PayPal residuo sul vostro account) allora PayPal tratterrà una commissione del 3,4% sulla transazione, più ulteriori 35 centesimi di euro.
• Nel caso vi siano molte richieste in questo senso, posso considerare di aggiungere un bottone per le donazioni via PayPal. Così facendo, però, PayPal tratterrebbe una percentuale da ogni donazione.

Specifico inoltre che io, Raffaele Manzo, tratterò i vostri dati personali nel rispetto delle normative vigenti e non li comunicherò a nessuno, a eccezione di una lista dei nomi dei donatori che compilerò per l'hotel Royal Palace affinché possa praticare gli sconti; su tale lista appariranno solo i nomi dei donatori, ma non l'entità delle donazioni o altri dati.

Qui poi dovrei chiudere con un entusiastico ed energico fraseggio di stile pubblicitario, ma sinceramente non sono il tipo.

Secret mind-link discovered, part II: Sympathy for the Devil

Follows from here, quite intuitively.

When I found out about Camwhores and compared it with my own never developed idea for a game to be called "Amateur", I still wasn't sure that Elizabeth Shoemaker Sampat and I shared a secret mind-link or maybe deep soul-link across the Atlantic Ocean, no. Certainty struck me later, as I went through the games submitted to the two previous rounds of the Ronnies earlier this year — hyper-excited as I am currently about the contest — and discovered that in February she conceived They Became Flesh.
Holy cow shit!
My (3-4?) Italian readers are, I guess, already "in" on this: that Fallen Angels are a hot topic for me. For my (0-2?) non-Italian readers: a small-ish Game Chef-like contest was run last year on Italian gaming forum Gente Che Gioca and I entered a game called I reietti di Eden (roughly: The Outcasts from Eden, proper English title still to be determined though), which has since become my main "thing", the one "big project" I plan to devote lots of energy to. Preliminary playtests exposed large holes in the mechanics and now a major revision (probably in English, or also in English) is upcoming, any time soon — one of which I'm really proud of. Well, I reietti di Eden is about heroic people sorely resenting their ancestors' casting out of Paradise, counting Lucifer the Bringer of Light (aka Prometheus) and the proud Fallen as their best friends and preparing to finally strike back in retaliation against God and the Heavenly Host, so to set wrongs right at last and — maybe even — regain a liberated Eden and Heavens for themselves. In my game, both Mortals and Fallen Angels are available as playable character types and there are mechanics to determine if and when the Fallen, overwhelmed by their melancholic longing for those Heavens they cannot forget, withdraw from the Mortals' side of the fight.
They Became Flesh is about the Fallen wandering a young world, not long after a stern and unforgiving God cast them down from Heavens because they sided with sinful Adam and Eve and questioned Him: they fell from grace for daring to doubt. It's about them trying to fit in with humankind or finding a place of their own on Earth — or maybe having their former heavenly status restored. Unfinished as it is, please go read the most current draft available!
While mine is obviously a very different game from Elizabeth's, I can't help but feel a strong kinship with her vision. My focus may be on the heroes of a "rightful" war, on the End of Times rather than on a still young Earth, but still the Fallen Angels of They Became Flesh are very much the same as mine: melancholic and tragic, torn between their love for humankind and their memories of Heavens. Lucifer is depicted much the same way, as a tragic idealist and a sympathetic character (true is that Elizabeth's Lucifer is very emphatically not the Snake of Eden/Prometheus, contrary to mine, but I don't feel this to be overwhelmingly important). Sure, there are hugely important literary predecessors to such a vision, etc., but that's absolutely not the point.
I look at the two games and see that they complement each other like they were a pair, deeply personally felt facets to the same subject-matter. Both aren't "done" yet, but I now like to think that sooner or later they will be, and maybe - dare I immodestly hope - that mutual knowledge will make both of them considerably better.

P.S. readers who are not yet familiar with Elizabeth's major works (It's Complicated, Blowback) please check them out on her website.