Preparing a .pdf for DrivThruRPG's print-on-demand

I've been encouraged to provide a print version of Soth. So I'm starting to investigate what that would involve.

In this initial phase, I only have three one concern:

• Will my current .pdf layout work for the print version? Are my margins wide enough? (Answered, below)
• How do I create a cover? (Answered, below)
• What will happen to my page numbers (which are currently on the outside corners)

I'm also aware that there's tonnes of other stuff I don't know that I don't know.

After looking at DriveThru's 'Publish' section, I've found a checklist that hopefully covers all these unknown unknowns: Print checklist (.pdf). Here are some other concerns I have after reading that:

• Do I need a barcode? (Answered, below)
• What is 'bleed'? And do I need it?
• Are my page numbers evenly-divisible? (Answered, below)
• What does "Last page removed for use by LS" mean?

One of the things that baffled me in that checklist was the acronym 'LS'. This seems to stand for 'Lightning Source', based on this tutorial video (not embeddable) I've also found at DriveThru.

So I'll need to download a cover template from LS. Heading over to the site, it gives me a choice between 'Independent Publishers' (using a service called 'Ingram Spark') and 'Medium to Large Publishers', using LS. So, I have two more questions:

• Do I need to set up an account with Lightning Source, and then link that to my DriveThruRPG account?
• Am I in the 'Medium to Large' category, because I'm with DriveThruRPG?
• (After I've done that) Where is the cover template?

Things I've answered, so far

• Looking at my Scribus file, it looks like my margins are fine.
• LS should have a template I can use for my cover.
• Even if my page numbers aren't evenly-divisible, it should be easy enough to change that.
• DriveThru has another printing checklist that says "We do not include barcodes." 

Ryuutama: preparing to run it for the first time

Ryuutama is a fantasy game of travel and exploration. I've been looking forward to digging into it for a while, to see how it works.

Here's what I know at the moment:

• Players portray non-traditional fantasy RPG characters like tinkers and bakers. They are not adventurers.
• Every character is hit by wanderlust (this is a normal and expected part of the setting) once during their lives. A game of Ryuutama covers the travels of a group who get wanderlust at the same time
• Wilderness travel is a big thing in the game (which situates Ryuutama near games like The One Ring and -- I think -- Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine)
• The GM portrays a dragon who looks after the travellers
• There are four different types of dragon a GM can control. A ... Winter (?) Dragon is one that signals a dying world.

I'll post my thoughts in the comments as I get a chance to read the game. Which, by the way, looks beautiful and (on an initial skim) clearly-written and logically-presented.

Wield: a fun game that I need to get better at GMing

I ran my first game of Wield last night, for four players. You play vatcha (intelligent magic items like The One Ring or the Luggage from Discworld), and the poor saps who own them.

One of the players described it like so:

"Tonight, Matt and I had a duel of wits as adversarial artifacts and their bearers. I played a magical finger and a scholar bearing a magical gauntlet. He played the magical gauntlet and the owner of the magical finger.

Yes."

Some observations, in no particular order:

• The central tensions between the vatcha (the magic items) and the heroes worked well.
  
• It wasn't quite as easy to let the players generate their own stories as I thought. I may need to steal the idea of player-generated Bangs from Sorceror and my own 'take note of highly charged situations and play them immediately' technique from Monsterhearts.
  
• The web of social relationships in the game challenged my savannah-optimised primate brain. With four players, it was just on the edge of what I was able to handle. Most team-based games (eg. D&D, Shadowrun, Leverage) have an easy-to-track 'us versus them' dynamic. In terms of games with (fictional) social complexity, I think it goes: Monsterhearts --> Wield --> The full version of Left Coast
   
• I definitely needed to create my own play aids, in order to understand the combat rules. I've broken it down into a 5-step process, which is easier to follow and adjudicate.
   
• Combat and overcoming obstacles are lethal. They're great situations to force vatcha players to decide whether to give the heros more power (and therefore more control).
   
• After consulting with some Wield GM-gurus, I can see the following player arrangements working:
• A 3-player game where everyone plays artefacts and heros
• A 4-player game where everyone plays the hero for the vatcha on their right or (for a far more focused game, you have two vatcha players and two hero players) 
• For 6+ players, have half the players playing artefacts and half playing heroes.

• I found it much easier to invent destinies for all the heroes. Those destinies also gave me tonnes of NPCs and locations to track (which is a good thing). ... The rules say to randomly assign heroes to the vatchas. When I created heroes, I riffed off what the vatcha players were coming up with. That made me suspect I could be better for the GM to assign heroes to players (at least at first).
  
• As well as creating a relationship map, I probably need to track the history that the vatcha players create. I definitely need to track each vatcha-hero combination: I was getting really lost in doing that.
  
• There's nothing that really points the vatchas at each other. As a result, the stories can drift apart a bit. That's probably fine in a multi-session game. I'll need to think about how you'd optimise it for a convention game.

So, I'd run this again ... after I refine some of my player handouts and streamline some of my 'how to introduce and frame the game' notes.

I'd also think about providing some pre-generated vatchas (to speed up a convention game). I've created 'playbooks' for the vatchas but I think it probably needs to be even faster to hit a climax in a three-hour slot.

Undying: preparing to run it for the first time

Undying by Paul Riddle is a diceless RPG about vampires preying on humans and fighting each other for dominance.

I've been interested in it for a couple of years now. It's currently being kickstarted and the rules are available for free over there: Undying kickstarter

I'm going to read through it over the next couple of days, posting my notes in the comments. I think this is something it'd be fun to run, soon.

How do you prepare to run a game for the first time?

There's that moment when you've read a game you haven't played before: the moment you decide you're actually going to run it.

What sort of techniques do you use?
 
My process is to try and build up a mental picture of what a play session would be like, and what information I'd need in order to run it well. I do that by:

• asking questions
• identifying gaps in my understanding
• clarifying the designer's intentions--through my own reading of the game, if possible
• looking for reference sheets I can use while I'm playing / running

It ends up being a bit like a reader's commentary.

This is something I think I'm going to be doing regularly here. I'll use the hashtag/label: #gameprep

Here are some examples:

I've just analysed Wield by John Wick and Gillian Fraser, which looks like a great game and got rave reviews at Kapcon this year.

Here's the second half of one for Circle of Hands by Ron Edwards.

I'll make an initial post here, and then put my follow-up comments on Google Plus as I read and ask questions. I think that's the best way to keep all of my observations in one play, that's still searchable later on.
That may or may not be followed up with an actual review of the game.

Restless: a freeform survival horror game

Played Restless last night: 's freeform horror game of survivors being hunted by an unstoppable evil force. This was a one-off game arranged via Facebook for a university games club. Every time I emphasised how lethal it would be, my prospective players would laugh and say tell me it sounded great.

They were right.

Players divide into 'survivors' and 'desolators'. Desolators describe the world and portray the Restless (the monsters who are hunting the survivors)

I played a desolator, along with Chris. I had some thoughts going in that were heavily influenced by The Darkest Hour (invisible electricity aliens).

Chris was interested in a different angle, and mentioned the Reavers from Firefly as a touchstone. We took that idea of frenzied humans as our starting point. Then I said I'd like there to be something unnatural about them: like they can hide in shadows or crawl on ceilings. Chris came back with the idea of 'possession' and we locked it in.

Not too much detail or backstory, but just enough for us to start jamming with.

The game is played out in sequences (or set-pieces from a horror movie). These are called 'verses'. The game gives you strong guidance for what happens in each verse. The order of verses is randomly determined.

Each verse provides prompts for actions to describe or settings or memories to invent. It felt a little like the verses encoded hard and soft moves into them.(*)

* Apocalypse World terminology.

Starting The Game

Our first verse was called 'Dreams and Nightmares': it made for a great opener, as it deals with memories, flashbacks, and difficult emotional terrain for each of the survivors. It really humanises them.
 
Right from the start of that card, we realised that (for the survivors could choose where to camp and how to defend themselves) the desolators would have to provide some setting details that weren't in the verse:

• What are the Restless?
• How long have the Restless been destroying the world?

It also seemed like we needed to empower the desolators to ask questions that:

• Lead the survivors into danger
• Explore the survivors misery, miserable lives

Giving desolators the power to ask those types of questions kept the game flowing smoothly, and steered clear of violating the Czege Principle ("When one person is the author of both the character's adversity and its resolution, play isn't fun.").

Specific Feedback On How Verses Work

I also wonder whether the desolators should be the ones to read out the information on each verse. I suspect that could:

• preserve suspense about what will happen next
• encourage immersion in the survivors
• simplify some of the instructions you need to read out (I'm thinking of "The going is tough" from 'Bushwhacking') ...

... but I'm not sure how important that is to Jonathan's vision of play. We just rotated players reading out cards and it worked fine.

The game is very very late playtest, so this probably hasn't come up for any other groups. While we played I did wonder about the phrasing of the cards. Because they're read aloud, some sections felt like they could be phrased as very specific questions to the survivors or using the imperative.

An example.

In the 'Bushwhacking' verse, it says "The survivors then quickly decide on an alternate route", but maybe making it "The survivors need to decide..." or "You need to decide..." would make what's required clearer.

 

Developing What The Restless Are

Between verses, you can swap from playing a survivor to a desolator (and vice versa), or choose to play a new or returning  survivor character.

This was great, creatively, for our group: two survivor players in the first verse leapt at the chance to play desolators in the second. And they were fantastic at it: much better than me. I love the idea that the game allows you to rotate how you creatively feed into the game based on your enthusiasm and energy.

In passing on the desolator role, I felt I had to brief the new desolators on what we'd established... and then give them permission to establish a fact each for themselves. We applied that protocol throughout the rest of the game. It led to some creepy imagery, including:

• Thick black streams of oil announcing the arrival of the Restless
• Anyone who had an open wound had a chance of becoming a Restless, regardless of whether a Restless was anywhere nearby.

Establishing A Social Contract For Tone?

Initially, people took the game's situation and character creation very seriously. Over the second and third verses, it became a little comedic: perhaps people were distancing themselves from the significant chance of character death? It became serious again towards the end of the third verse and during the fourth.

Next time I play this, I think I'll introduce the social contract from EPOCH (and adapt it a bit):

At the beginning of the game you inform the players of the purpose of EPOCH (a game of character-driven horror) and emphasise that during Tension Phases it is inappropriate to ‘break character’.

By making this explicit and securing agreement from everyone present, you and the players share the responsibility for building game atmosphere. You can remind individual players of this during the game, should you be faced with a specific instance of player blocking.

Again, I'm not sure if that maps to Jonathan's vision of play, but it certainly maps to what I want out of playing each verse. Because each verse is reasonably short (in our game, 20-40 minutes), I think that social contract would be pretty realistic.

---   ---   ---

All in all, a great game. It'll be going into my go-bag for things to run at Games on Demand and at short-notice.

My criteria for reviewing Game Chef games

I have a simple structure for reviewing Game Chef games,

First, I record my stream-of-consciousness, reading-it-for-the-first-time impressions.

During that first read, I take notes and divide them into sections that match Edward De Bono's Six Hats process:

• • Structural thoughts: What do I think the designer's 'vision of play' is? What will a session of the game look and feel like when the game is working perfectly?
    
  • Information: What don't I know? What do I have questions about?
    
  • Feelings: I tend to find I write this section last, as it ve synthesises my other thoughts.
    
  • Insights or Ideas: What would I like to see next from this game? What would I suggest in order to achieve the vision of play?
    
  • Positives: What is the game doing that I find fun, worthy, well-executed, interesting, or unique?
    
• Issues: Is there anything that I'm unsure about? Perhaps I don't think it fits with the game or that it won't work.

How does it apply the theme: A Different Audience?

What ingredients are used? How effectively are they integrated into the game? Personally, I don't give this much weight: I see the benefit of Game Chef as encouraging people to write a game. Sticking too closely to the ingredients may inhibit developing the game further.

Finally:

Am I inspired to run the game? Is there anything missing that I need in order to feel like I can run it? If I don't want to run it, is that because I'm not the target audience for the designer's vision of play, or is there another reason?

I then take a few hours break from the game. I let it settle, before coming back to it.