Post Game Thoughts While Tidying Up the Kitchen

[Rossum]

**staggers out of bed**

Well, first I'd like to thank the fine folks at Bigelow hot teas and Dr. Pepper bottling companies everywhere. For that matter, loose tea manufacturers around the world and throughout time. I couldn't have done it without yall. Also much kudos to Apple iWork's Pages. It helped me refine my submission into its current form. Finally, to those with new babies, congratulations!

Quick thoughts:
I'd estimate I spent something on hte order of 40 hours working on 1984 Prime in one way or another. Unfortunately, I lost Monday and Tuesday due to IRL concens and getting sick. To paraphrase the comedian Brian Regen: "How can seeing not be at the top of your priority list? What, are you going to see tomorrow?"

My loose schedule was to have a complete draft ready by Saturday, so I could have the entire of Saturday for text tweaking, then Sunday would be left entirely for pretty producion. As it turned out, My complete draft was ready bu Sunday, so I only had the last day for final editing and production. Believe me

I agree with Clinton, above- Assuming this is happens on Memorial Day weekend next year, I'd like to see a rule requiring game submission by midnight Sunday, but you have another 24 hours for one single revision. I know that my game has a few last-minute typos, I'm not happy with some of the layout, and I left out a few bits of clipart I wanted to use.

I really wish I had more time to comment on the games I saw- I tried to post a few words on encouragement for a few of the entries, but I didn't make the time to really process what I saw. I'm hoping to get and give more feedback now that the competition is done. I don't know if it should be a requirement per Matt's idea, but I don't know a better way to encourage. Maybe a Chairman's Challenege?

Regarding the competition itself, I'm curious to see who chose what ingredients for their game. Did anyone *not* choose Companion? Just how unpopular was Entomology? Maybe once the final entries are here we'll gain that knowledge. I should conduct a survey.

About my game: On the whole, I feel really good about it. The whole time I worked on it, I had ideas for what I thought of as "the Expanded version," a fully fleshed out game for printing and purchasing. At the very least, I discarded Character Creation, other communities, and many more details about the setting. I wish I had more time to examine the mechanics - dare I say playtest? - and spend more time on the PDF presentation.

I want to read every submission and hopefully change my mind here, but I think that the Rules Limitations encouraged the submission of entires with less roleplaying and more game. There's a lot of entries that have more a "card game with roles" or "party game" feel at first glance. I don't know if that's bad or not, and I don't want to bring up the "What is an RPG?" discussion, but I wanted to mention my observation. I do reserve the right to retract these statements. :)

That's it for now- off to have a proper meal.

MDK

[Andy K]

Yeah, I learned a couple things too as a judge and organizer: I want to brainstorm with folks later on how to encourage cross-posting. As for myself, I really should have made a more active commitment to spend at least 90 minutes a day for a single week reading over entries and making comments, and roping other judges in to do the same.

I'm two months into a new job that is kicking my ass, on a particularly busy week... but everyone else is busy, too, so it's no excuse. I just should have been a little more active in agressively posting to other folks' threads. For that, I apologize to all those who posted and didn't get a lot of solid feedback.

Also, I know that the judging hasn't gone down yet, and won't for a while, but if anyone has any other feedback about anything regarding the competition, please post here or in a new thread- I'll be going over every single piece of feedback, looking for ways to incorporate it.

-Andy

[Ben Lehman]

I think that the forum, rather than the "one big thread" at the Forge, encouraged people to kind of go off into their own little worlds. It left things a little more tidy, maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a bad thing.

I was totally amazed by the amount of innovation and talent that went into making these games. I had had doubts about the move away from the Forge, worrying that it would dampen the experimental spirit, but there were some fine and very impressive games being written here, and I retract that worry in shame and embarrassment.

I think that the ingredients were a little bit weaker this year. Something about "Companion" was just too easy, I think, and Entymology is just a little too obscure -- most people that used that ingredient seemed to use it mostly as "insects" rather than the specific meaning of the scientific study of insects. Compare to the ingredients from previous years: Africa, Art, Court, Numerology; Volcano, Sphere, Blood, Song; and Ice, Island, Assault, Dawn. To me, the previous ingredients are a little more evocative, a little more open-ended, and also tend to be a little bit more concrete. In my opinion, this is a little better for design, but I'm an old conservative codger.

I have mixed feelings about the rules restriction. On the one hand, using one of those was so easy that it was almost nothing, but on the gripping hand, I think it meant that games designed here tended to be slightly less playable as games -- not because a rules restriction is inherently a bad thing, but rather because it is yet another limitation on creativity. I'm very sympathetic with *why* they were put into place, and I think that they made it a much better contest, but I'm skeptical as to whether they produced better games.

As for what I learned from my own design -- I'm really glad I had the chance to mess around with a board and cards. Those sorts of fiddly bits are really useful things, and Polaris (last year's IGC entry and my present publication project) is so distant from such things that it was refreshing to dive into trying to fine tune a deck of 70 unique cards to produce a useful, balanced set. I don't think that 百花 (A Hundred Flowers) is nearly as good a game as many of the others entered, and not nearly as good as some of my other work, but it was a real chance for me to develop a different set of skills, and I'm grateful for that.

Of course, I really shouldn't talk down my game before the judging, but go figure...

Oh, and also, my final list of game inspirations (didn't make it into the PDF): Dogs in the Vineyard, Apples to Apples, Once Upon a Time, Tales from the Arabian Nights, The Dance and the Dawn, Trollbabe.

yrs--
--Ben

[Doug Ruff]

[Rossum]

[BrennaLaRosa]

Well, I'm impressed with myself. I made it to the end through headaches, insomnia, Real-World Work, and even the loss of my dear four-footed friend, morale booster and inspiration. I'm genuinly proud of myself and the competition. We did great things here.

Who knows? Maybe you'll be able to buy Titania Regina in a year or so. Can't wait for next year's challenge!

[PlotDevice]

[matthijs]

[JenniferS]

[PlotDevice]