Every so often an idea hits me and I am required to follow that path. I have no say in the matter. That thing inside me, that drives me, forces me to follow that crumb and I have no say. It doesn’t mean I have to complete it, although that is the general intent, just […]

Taking a break from writing the rule and trying to reorganize them I figured I would work on the game board graphics for a while. In the process of working on the board I came up with the name of the game. I was looking for sample graphics of French sailing vessels to use as […]

So now that I have worked the mechanics and the cards and the boards and all those aspects of the game into something that seems usable and feasible, I am now ready to put them all together around the story elements of the game. This is supposed to be a hybrid between card/board game and […]

While I was working on the order of events during a narrated scene I thought about how another type of card can be thrown into the mix. They would be found in the vote deck and would come in two flavors, Items and Skills. These are drawn like normal vote cards, but when they are […]

Not a whole lot to add… I needed to take a break from mechanics and hard thinking, so I played with the graphics and made them my own. I also colorized them.

The background color is what I am going to use for the background color of the cards, or at least close to it. Most […]

Since this is going to be part RPG, we need to have characters in the game. But unlike most RPGs I want them to be relatively simple pre-generated characters that players choose from. Also, since they can die during the game and be replaced with another, we need to have a decent number of them. […]

As I talked about in my post about the board, the voyage and mutiny are times according to markers on the board. This is something that the GM usually takes care of in most RPGs, but since this is going to be a board/RPG hybrid that doesn’t have a GM I made some of their […]

When it comes to working with ideas that involve some kind of item or graphic, I tend to have to do some simple layout ideas to see if I can make it work. This means mock-ups. Nothing fancy and no real style to them, but something I can play with visually. So I used some […]

Today was a crazy day at work and I had to do some chores at my mom’s house while they are out of town, so I didn’t really get much done in the way of work on the game… Luckily I have Friday off (as well as Monday) so I can catch up on those […]

First off, let me say that I am now leaning most heavily to the concept of a mutiny brewing on a ship. Each player is a mutineer trying to quietly gain support of the crew so that when it happens they will be put in charge, but being careful not to expose themselves too soon […]

This year I have decided to enter the Game Chef Competition that has been going on for several years now. It’s a enter if you want and there ain’t no prize at the end kind of contest. The real prize is similar to that of NaNoWriMo, the good feeling you get at succeeding at something […]

One of the main things I am attempting to do with the National Wrestling Game is to play up the idea that the crowd is just as important as the wrestlers to the show and during the matches. When playing the game the crowd is played by everyone who is not actively involved in the […]

Although I am sure a lot of people are going to grumble at me for saying this, I tend to get too many ideas for games (styles, mechanics, settings, bits & pieces). I always want to run with and expand these ideas when they hit me, but that would mean delaying something I am currently […]

For the last couple weeks now I have been stumped on writing Whispering Bluff, which is frustrating me to no end, but in the meantime I have been working on the NWG again. This time I am completely revamping what was there to better represent what I want the game to be about… Fame.
So this […]

Hhere I sit, trying to get scene framing and conflicts to fit together the way I want them to happen. Struggling with words and balance. Bouncing back and forth between ways the currency of the game (still called X-Points until I can think of a real name) is going to work. Grumbling about how I […]

I can’t believe I overlooked this common aspect of the very genre I am trying to emulate with Whispering Bluff. It took listening to others discuss techniques they have used to move stories along in RPGs to spark this realization. This will have to be corrected.
If you watch enough of these kinds of movies (or […]

Whispering Bluff has become the main gaming focus for me right now, both because I love the genre and it’s the newest idea I have worked on. I figured if I was going to share the process of how I grow the game from here with everyone, I should first go over where the game […]

It’s 2009. A new year is upon us and this is the time that people start talking about all the things they are going to do differently this year. There are all sorts of resolutions flying all over the place. Promised actions of change. How many of these do you think the makers will actually […]

As I work on the different phases of Whispering Bluff I have been thinking about gaming stances a lot. By this I am not talking about types of games, attitudes towards games, or even that GNS Theory crap (I used that word because of all that mentioning GNS usually drudges up, not because of my […]

Although things have slowed down, I am still actively writing on, rewriting, and testing the Whispering Bluff game. A lot of recent events have been less than encouraging, but I can’t say that last night’s playtest was one of them. What I saw and learned last night has really reinvigorated me on this project. I […]