Progress report

Okay, time for a quick status update on my various projects.

Writing Freeform Larps

Writing Freeform Larps, my book about how I write freeforms, is nearly done. I had a first draft ready in January, and I asked the uk-freeforms mailing list for anyone who wanted to comment on it. I got a good number of responses and a lot of great comments. I’ve worked through those comments (I took on board about 80%, I think), so I’m now close to publishing.

I’ve decided I want this in book form, but I’m not precious about getting an ISBN. So I’m using Lulu, plus there will be a pdf download on Itch.io.

I’m currently working on the cover – a minimal design and back-cover blurb. As cover design is not my strong point, the best I am hoping for is legibility. Maybe one day it will have an awesome cover.

With luck, this should be ready in March, and then I will have to promote it.

Way out West

Updating Way out West is my current project for Freeform Games. Currently, Way out West comes in several forms:

• A free version for 10 players
• A free version for 10 players for kids
• A standard version 
• A standard version (10-14 players) for kids
• An expansion pack with ten extra characters
• An expansion pack with ten extra characters for kids.

This is too many and is painful to manage; I’m simplifying it:

• I’m folding the expansion pack into the main game – so Way out West will be for 10-24 players.
• I’m removing separate kids and adult versions. The differences were minor – we removed most of the drinking references and changed “saloon girls” to “waitresses” for the kids’ version. As that’s just a terminology change, I’m using the kids’ version as a basis.
• I’m updating the game into our latest format as I do this.

When I’m done, that should leave us with two versions:

• A free version for 10 players
• A standard version for 10-24 players

I imagine this will be finished in April.

Other London

I’m pleased with how Other London has gone. I’ve discussed this previously, but this is where I am now:

• Other London: Desk 17 is the setting and background.
• Other London: The Fallen is a free investigation.
• Other London: Murder of a Templar is a second investigation.

These are available on DriveThruRPG and Itch.io. (Or they will be soon – as I speak, I’m waiting for DriveThru RPG to approve Murder of a Templar.)

Next up is Other London: Tales of Terror, a collection of Tales of Terror suitable for Other London. I’ve just started this, so it will be a few weeks before it’s ready. 

Turning Other London into a physical book (through DriveThruRPG) is still on the to-do list, but I will probably have to wait to upgrade my laptop.

Count Magnus’ Descendant

My scenario based on MR James’ Count Magnus (discussed previously) is pretty much complete. I am testing it and assuming that goes according to plan, I will upload it to Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

The Roswell Incident

After Retcon B’s successful run of The Roswell Incident, I am putting it into Freeform Games’ format. We don’t have any alien games at the moment, and while it isn’t strictly a murder mystery (although it could be…), it might sell reasonably well.

I’m also interested to see how our customers react to a more-freeformy game. But first I need to get it ready, and this has meant quite a few changes, such as creating a newspaper for the game as background.

Messages from Callisto

Messages from Callisto follows on from Children of the Stars (itself following All Flesh is Grass and The Roswell Incident). It was ready shortly after Christmas, but thanks to needing to prepare for Retcon, I’ve only now started thinking about when I will run it (online). And looking at the calendar, it will not be until after Easter.

The future

All Flesh is Grass: I want to take the feedback from Retcon and update the game files, then put it on Itch.io. It’s so heavily based on Clifford D Simak’s novel that I don’t think I can charge for it. 

The Highgate Club: I’d like to get this freeform in a presentable state so I can put it on Itch.io.

Preparing for Consequences: I plan to run Children from the Stars and Messages from Callisto at Consequences in November. They will need tweaking.

The Orphan Room: The next Other London scenario is a pile of notes that needs bashing into shape.

Beyond Callisto: I will start planning whatever happens after Messages from Callisto – although I think I need to run that first and see what happens.

Sketching and drawing

I used to enjoy sketching and drawing, but now I only do it because I must. I’m not sure when I stopped, but I used to sketch monsters and creatures and spaceships, and they’d occasionally be published in gaming fanzines.

I was never any good at figures or faces (or real stuff generally). Instead, they were mostly things to support my gaming habit—Cthulhoid monsters and the like.

Most are pen and ink. Here’s a selection:

A shoggoth, underwater.

A thing (a shoggoth?) in a fishbowl. I always liked this one.

A map—presumably for a game scenario, probably Call of Cthulhu. I have no recollection of Littleford—I can’t remember which game this was for. I wonder what was significant here - the empty house? The recluse? Or the only named property, Joseph Morris? I used to enjoy drawing maps.

A spaceship of some sort.

A Type-S Scout (from Traveller) menaced by a giant space jellyfish. Look at all those dots! No wonder I'm short-sighted!

An alien—pen and ink, copied and then watercoloured.

Modern art

These days, my art is pretty much confined to items for Freeform Games. That means I end up drawings guns, or jewellery or other mundane items. While I find them a bit of a faff to do, I enjoy the process more than I think I will.

So this is the sort of thing I draw these days.

A lucky rabbit’s paw.

A book with a hidden compartment.

A sample case.

A teabag. I think that's the most mundane thing I've drawn.

A box of matches.

A pistol. I've drawn quite a few guns over the years.

Kumospace for freeform larps

Recently I ran our Reunion with Death murder mystery freeform larp online using Kumospace. I called for players from the uk-freeforms mailing list and Facebook page and the Remote Larps Facebook group. I got nine players, including four people I’d not met before.

So, Kumospace.

Kumospace is a spacial chat—a virtual space where people can form groups for conversations. As a user, you are presented with a floorplan and you move towards someone to talk to them. Then, when you are close to them, you can chat.

Kumospace is (currently) free for up to 30 participants, so it’s ideal for gaming.

Kumospace for larping

So how was Kumospace for larping? Well, it was pretty good. I created a simple floor representing a hotel function space. I had different chairs, a piano playing in the corner, and some (virtual) drinks and snacks.

The game in full flow - I've got the map open which shows the whole floor

I also created a separate out-of-character floor where everyone met at the start so we could get used to the interface.

The video and sound worked well for almost everyone—one player struggled with video and sound, but we don’t know why that was.

Video itself can be a little small (especially if you are used to Discord). You can create a pop-out which shows a larger video if that helps (but still smaller than you get on Discord).

The virtual space gave a real physical sense of space—much more so than different channels in Discord. Other characters were definitely “over there” rather than “in that channel” which added to the ambience.

Changing layout

I found changing the layout is straightforward—it’s all drag and drop. Several templates can easily be modified, which saves some work. Creating a standard hotel/workspace/bar/convention setting is easy; if you want something more outré, that will be harder.

You can add images from the web to customise to your virtual space. (I didn’t need to do that.)

Some objects are (slightly) interactive—such as a tray of drinks that adds a drink icon to your avatar if you click on it. The glass or cup slowly empties, representing you drinking it. However, it would be nice if there were more game-y icons—so things where you could add some descriptive text.

I didn’t use rooms in Kumospace, as they introduced the feature only a few days before I was due to run Reunion with Death and I didn’t have time to figure them out. Rooms work slightly differently—in a room, everyone can hear everyone else. So that means you need not be close to someone to hear them properly, which would have been better for the debrief when everyone was crowded on top of each other.

What sort of larp?

Kumospace best suits conversational freeforms/larps. Games with items and money and complicated abilities won’t work so well. Of the recent larps I’ve played, Brest or Bust and Smoke and Mirrors (both at Peaky 2022) would have been fine on Kumospace.

As Reunion with Death was designed to be run online, it worked fine with Kumospace. The only complication is abilities, but none require the GM and the players managed them themselves.

I don’t think I could have run a more complex freeform with Kumospace. For my recent SF games (The Roswell Incident and All Flesh is Grass I used Discord with LARPPorterBot; I’m not sure how I would have done that with Kumospace.

It would be great to have a standalone app to manage items/abilities/contingencies that we could use alongside Kumospace or Zoom. Maybe one day.

Feedback from players

I asked for some feedback from the players on using Kumospace. Here are some of their thoughts:

• I didn’t think I’d like it, but I was wrong. I was impressed!
• Kumospace was the perfect online platform for this. Having the visuals of moving made for a wayyyy more natural experience of joining and leaving conversations—much more like real life—compared with the breakout rooms in Discord, where you are either ‘in’ or ‘out’ and nothing in between.
• One thing worth flagging before start of play is that people might be able to hear everyone in a crowd if some people are outside the range, so piling up is a good idea. (NB—rooms, which I didn’t use, can overcome this.)
• I struggled with Kumospace—you would think they’d show you the rooms you had invitations for.  (Once I got into it, it was great.)
• Pleasantly surprised. I’d like to see it work in a way where players’ icons bounce off one another, rather than superimposing on each other.
• I liked it. The flexibility of moving around in a room (instead of changing between channels) made the game more dynamic.
• The video pictures of the other players were rather small, so you couldn’t see their faces as easily as on a regular video chat.
• I liked wandering around and finding separate spaces for a private chat. It seemed nice to have the visual “room” compared to Discord. However, in practice it ate up wifi and I found it slow to respond. I couldn’t hear or be heard until I was top of other avatars, so it got in the way of roleplaying for me.
• I suspect Kumospace changes the dynamics of games, resulting in more group interaction than two-person interaction. Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

On that last point, I remember observing that we typically had three groups of players at any one time. It was usually two small groups (two or three players together), and everyone else (so four or five players). So the players did bunch up—but I also see this in live games and on Discord.

Feedback as a GM

I found running the game was quiet)—although that may have been as much to do with Reunion with Death as Kumospace.

For Reunion with Death’s various announcements, I copied them from the pdf and pasted them into the global chat. I then made a short announcement to everyone (using the host’s broadcast function) telling them that the announcement was there—I didn’t read it out. That meant that players could look at the announcements at their leisure. (Unfortunately, you can’t post images to the chat.)

Towards the end of the game, I found it hard to read the room to judge when to stop the game. While I used the timetable that comes with Reunion with Death, I’d normally monitor the room towards the end of the game to work out when to bring the game to an end. However, this was much harder (also hard on Discord), so I used the game timetable.

Overall?

Kumospace was my first experience with spacial chat. It works for larps—especially simple larps without complicated mechanics. I intend to use it again—and I’d like to try it as a player.

Death in Venice

This is a catch-up post, mostly linking to other pieces I’ve written.

I ran Death in Venice recently (well, back in September). Death in Venice is one of our online murder mystery games, and as I had had nothing to do with this one (Mo did it all), I thought I’d discover what it’s like to both host a murder mystery and play in one.

TLDR; most enjoyable—more fun than I had expected, which was a very pleasant surprise.

Following this I ended up with a few blog posts elsewhere.

• Hosting and playing Death in Venice: My post for the Freeform Games blog.
• Simultaneously hosting and playing Death in Venice: And a similar post for my Great Murder Mystery Games website. These two posts are similar, but for slightly different audiences.
• Using Discord for online murder mystery games: How I set Discord up Death in Venice and The Karma Club for online play. Discord isn’t perfect, but it’s currently my favourite system for online larps.
• Casting a Freeform Games murder mystery game: I realised that, besides the game instructions, we haven’t provided any tips for casting our games, or the process we use. (Or at least, the process I used—Mo may do something different.) So that’s what this is.

Freeform ability strips

Ability Strips are a way to quickly add abilities to a freeform. They consist of a strip of card with three abilities for each character. There is also space for the character’s secret (something that they don’t want other people to know) and information (something that they know but don’t mind sharing).

You can download the file here.

I wrote them with Peaky in mind. There’s rarely a lot of spare time at Peaky, and so there are almost never any abilities at the game written there. While they’re not always necessary, sometimes I miss them so I designed these ability strips that do not require much effort to use. I imagine it wouldn’t take more than an extra 30 minutes to drop these into a typical Peaky game.

The abilities refer to goals and an “Other People” section, so you’ll need to make sure that your character sheets include those - but many already do.

If you’re familiar with our murder mystery games at Freeform Games then you may recognise much of this. In our games, characters all have three abilities, a secret and a clue. Our current format for our games has abilities within the character booklet, but at one time we had ability strips just like these (some of our older games still do).

Abilities don’t suit all games, but I can imagine them working well for games such as Best of the Wurst, An Ecumenical Matter, and Carry on at Camp David. I wouldn’t use them for games like Second Watch or Burning Orchid.

Some tips for using the strips

Knowing that I was going to include abilities wouldn’t change how I write a freeform - the abilities simply make it easy for information to be shared within the freeform.

Some of the abilities refer to a characters first goal. So it’s nice if the top goal is fairly interesting. (I like to think of using abilities as rolling a critical in a tabletop RPG - so it’s nice if you always get something worth having.) But on the other hand make sure that that top goal doesn’t give too much away.

There’s no reason why two (or more) characters can’t have the same abilities.

I generally don’t include many of the abilities that expose secrets, and I am careful about who I give those to.

In Freeform Games, the murder can’t be solved purely by using abilities (so the murderer doesn’t have “I’m the murderer” as their secret). So be circumspect when thinking about what to use as secrets and information.

Adding Ability Strips to The Highgate Club

Before posting this here I’ve taken the Ability Strips out for a spin and added them to The Highgate Club. I’d already prepped this as I had hoped to run it in January, but I didn’t get enough players and ran Death on the Gambia instead. So The Highgate Club is all printed out and ready to run...

So all I did was use the ability strips as given and created one for each character. I re-read their character sheet to identify an appropriate secret and piece of information, and that was it. The Highgate Club has 14 characters so I needed to create four more ability strips - and all I did was duplicate two of the pages. (So some characters have duplicate ability strips - not that it matters.)

I did check through the characters and make sure that they had an interesting first goal and that they knew at least two or three other people - that did mean a little bit of rewriting, which probably wasn’t a bad thing.

I haven’t run The Highgate Club again yet - and I’m looking forward to seeing if the strips make a difference.

Expanding further

The abilities I’ve used are all fairly straightforward information-sharing abilities that suit pretty much any freeform. Please feel free to replace with other abilities that suit your game.

A simple way to make the abilities suited to the character is to add a bit of flavour text, explaining why they have that ability.

Freeform Games have some standard rules for combat, arrests, capturing, poisoning and pickpocketing that all contain further examples of abilities. You’re welcome to use them!

Here’s the link to the Ability Strips again.

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Links to some of the things I've recently written elsewhere.

Hosting Death on the Gambia in 2019: In January I hosted Death on the Gambia for the Little Leeds Larps Facebook group. Getting enough players was a bit of a challenge - we were hoping to get enough to run The Highgate Club, but instead I hosted Death on the Gambia instead.

Leeds Freeform Larps: This is the wiki I set up to promote freeforms in Leeds. Not terribly successful, at least not yet.

Looking Back at 2018: For the Freeform Games blog. My annual review of the year. I know that December is full of looking back stories, but I like to do this in January because the year isn't over until it's over, and I want my figures to be accurate.

Big Money: Again, for the Freeform Games blog. Here I've provided the money graphics for all our games so that our customers can do what I did when recently hosting Death on the Gambia.

Investigating Pickpocket Crimes simple rules for investigating pickpockets in freeforms. Written for Freeform Games, but anyone can use them.

Crime and punishment in freeforms

Policemen, detectives, and investigators are arguably are the least fun characters to play in a freeform - particularly a weekend long game. While the bad guys are generally getting up to mischief, the good guys have to follow due process. And while the good guys will probably win (because the bad guys know they are the bad guys and are destined to lose), it’s actually not much fun for the good guys.

The problem is that some crimes are unsolvable unless you happen to get just the right clue, or talk to just the right person. And in a 70 player weekend freeform, it’s highly likely you won’t manage that.

Crimes in Edo City

Here are examples from Shogun, where I played the mostly-honest moneylender Kinyu.

Before the start of the game, my offices had been burnt down. I never found out why, and I never found out who did it. (At least, not during the game.) I reported it to the authorities, but nothing happened.

Similarly, my brother's corpse went missing just before the game. Nobody seemed to know much about it, and again, I didn't conclusively find out what happened.

In both cases it seemed to be virtually impossible to find out what had happened, and who had done it - and that seems a shame because finding out would have added to my game as I would have confronted the guilty parties and who knows where that would have led.

In a third instance at Shogun, I was questioned by the authorities and I didn’t want to tell them what I knew. As a result the trail went dead (for them, at least). I was questioned again when I think the GMs had given the police detective a “detect lies” skill, but unfortunately they failed their skill roll. I would like to think that my game would have become more interesting had my mendacity been found out, but I didn’t know that: my worry was that it would become a lot worse...

Investigation Skill

In 2013 I posted some investigation rules on the uk-freeforms wiki. I don’t think they’ve been tried out yet. The original rules were aimed at solving the problem of pickpockets - the problem being that it is really annoying to spend quite some time getting an important item, only to have it stolen putting you back at square one. So I developed a system where in-game crimes could be solved (requiring a small bit of admin on the part of the GMs).

My thinking has evolved a little since then, but the fundamental idea remains: give some characters an Investigation skill.

Detectives, amateur sleuths, private eyes and reporters might have this as a skill.

Investigation slips look like this:

This goes in the GM Research Request box and is dealt with by a GM who finds the investigator and goes through the crime with them.

Some rules on how this works:

• GM has absolute authority on the amount of information provided.
• The investigation skill may be used both for events set up pre-game, and for those taking place during the game.
• Resolution mechanics will depend on the system being used. But the results are likely to be:
• A clue or hint.
• The identity of the perpetrator.
• The identity of the perpetrator and evidence. (Evidence would be an item card that the GM would complete that the investigator could take to whatever court system is used.)
• On Friday evening only clues will be given out (no “solutions”).
• The older the crime, the less likely that evidence will be available (and may require a higher skill roll, or whatever is being used).
• Pickpockets may only be investigated within the same game period. (See below for more on pickpocketing.)

GM’s have authority on what clues they give out, to avoid players abusing this to shortcut the big crimes. So for example, if I used this in one of our murder mystery games, you couldn’t use it to shortcut the main murder investigation.

Arrest and justice

Note that this keeps the investigation separate from any arrests or justice system. The idea is not necessarily to punish the wrongdoer, but to create more plot for the players by exposing secrets and shining light on dark deeds. Even if the culprit is known, the investigation doesn’t necessarily result in hard evidence that you can take to a judge.

Even if it does lead to a formal conviction, the punishments need to fit the crime. Some suggestions:

• A warning.
• A small fine.
• Community service (however that might work).
• Repaying the victim.
• A large fine.
• A short time in jail.
• A long time in jail (very rare).
• Execution (exceedingly rare).

All punishments should, if possible, improve a player's game rather than detract from it.

Jail: Jail takes players out of the game and is arguably punishing the player for the character’s actions. One way to make time in jail more palatable is for there to be benefits such as:

• Increasing your crime skills.
• A new ability taught by a fellow inmate such as learning to pick locks or open safes.
• A favour owed by a member of the underworld.
• Knowledge leading to a new plot: “Before he was executed, your cellmate told you that Yellowbeard’s treasure is hidden in an old silver mine north of Tombstone.”

Pickpocket skill

Many people don’t like the pickpocket skill. On one hand it’s a useful mechanic for replicating a real-life skill (one that is thankfully rare); on the other hand it can be particularly demoralising to have spent all game trying to get hold of something only to have it stolen by someone unknown. (I’ve written more about this here.)

But with a bit of thought, the main downside of pickpocketing is that it has no repercussions for the thief - and no way for the victim to find out who has pickpocket them.

First, pickpocket needs to be changed to be a one-use ability:

The Investigation skill above can then be used to solve pickpocketing crimes like any other. And the only record keeping the GMs need to do is to write on the pickpocket form what was actually stolen.

(In terms of punishment, I recommend returning the stolen goods combined with either a warning or a fine.)

Investigation in freeforms

So that’s my thoughts on investigation in freeforms. They might work, they might not - but let’s try them and see if they work.

#RPG12: Q1 New Players

In the spirit of RPGaDay in August, Paul Mitchener has started an alternative set of daily RPG questions - the Christmas dozen, one every two days. His argument is that 31 questions is too many (and for me, August is holiday month so it's doubly bad).

Even so, I've found 12 questions fairly challenging. I think I'd prefer one a month...

You’re running an RPG to introduce new players to the RPG hobby this month. Which game and genre do you choose, and why?

Although I don't do it often, I love introducing new players to the hobby. But, I find that I do put myself under a lot of pressure to make sure that they have a good experience. The last thing I want the game to be is a disappointment. (It’s a bit like running a convention game in that sense.)

And I’d always run a one-shot to show off roleplaying, rather than drop a new player into a campaign. (Not that I run campaigns these days…)

So while the system is easy (Fate Accelerated - it’s my current go-to system, it’s simple, and character sheets are easy to parse) the genre depends on who they are.

If I felt that the players were up for fantasy, I’d run something like The Craster Demon. If I thought they would be more likely to enjoy urban fantasy, then I’d run an Other London adventure for them. Both of these are my own settings, and both are things I’m comfortable running.

I have a feeling that Ben Robbins’ Follow would be a good introduction to roleplaying, but I’ve yet to play it.

Looking back

And having said that, I thought I’d look back at what I’ve done when I’ve run games for new players in the past.

In the dim distant past, I have used Call of Cthulhu as in introductory game. Call of Cthulhu has lots of bonuses - it’s set in the “real world”, so that removes a lot of the learning and geekiness (which was more of an issue back in the day). And everyone understands horror. These days I’d be more likely to run Cthulhu Dark than Call of Cthulhu, simply because Cthulhu Dark is simpler (although I need to get a few games of Cthulhu Dark under my belt first).

Megan's first character sheet

The first game I ran for Megan, my daughter, was Faery’s Tale. But she was only five - and I was targeting the game to my audience. (I ran a rescue scenario. Megan played a fairy who had to rescue Jack from the giant in the clouds, and she invented a "mechanical Jack" that would replace Jack so that they could escape. I was so proud.)

On the other hand, I ran the D&D starter set for my two nephews Ben and James and their father, Simon. This must have been about the time of D&D v3, and  we were in Travelling Man in Leeds and, out of the blue, Simon decided to buy the boys the D&D starter set for Christmas. I quickly read up on it overnight, and the following day we played through the introductory adventure.

As an introduction to D&D it was really good, although it wasn’t really what I think of as roleplaying (too much combat).

Shameless self promotion

Way out West

Looking slightly beyond the table, I set up Freeform Games with Mo Holkar to bring freeform style roleplaying games to normal people. We don’t tell people that they’re playing a roleplaying game, because we don’t want to scare them off.

But I estimate that most of our customers are new to roleplaying, so I think that counts.

If you'd like to find out more, you can get a free murder mystery game (Way out West) by signing up to our newsletter.

Eating our own dogfood

I recently played A Will to Murder, and I wrote about it on the Freeform Games blog.

Mo described this on Facebook as me eating our own dogfood.

Ugh.

I do feel that playing A Will to Murder is a lot more enjoyable than I imagine eating dogfood is.

Unless you're a dog, of course.

(Monty, our 7 month old golden doodle would probably disagree with me. He likes dogfood. On the other hand he's never played a murder mystery larp, so I could be wrong.)

Limited Words

I love writing, but I don’t have unlimited words. So I tend to abandon my blog when I have other projects on the go.

So here are some recent projects that have distracted me from writing anything here:

The Peckforton Papers: I proposed a couple of ideas for The Peckforton Papers, a larp project. Both were accepted. While one paper was ‘just’ a revamp of an old article, the other was a discussion about Peaky, and completely new. The first draft of both are finished, I’m letting them rest for a week or two before revisiting.

Murder of a Templar: I’ve been really enjoying running The Bone Swallower, an urban fantasy Fate Accelerated game recently (although for various reasons we haven’t played for about six weeks now so it’s not quite finished). So part way through, I started thinking about the next installment, and because I like to prepare by writing out the scenario, that’s just what I’ve done. I’ve hit a bit of a stumbling block, which I’m currently working through.

The Reality is Murder: This is the current game I’m editing for Freeform Games. It’s a game that was submitted an embarrassingly long time ago, and I’ve finally decided to pull it together.

The Peaky Files: Volume 1: I’ve just finished putting this together for Peaky Games. It contains three complete freeforms and you can buy it from Lulu. (This is the only one of these four projects that I can say is actually finished…)

Stuff that I want to write about, but need a bit of headroom before I can fit them in: the gender agenda and freeforms (which follows on from Peaky), attention and addiction (I’ve recently read Irresistible, and I’ve had to uninstall World of Tanks), my house rules for board games, reflecting on The Bone Swallower (when we’ve finally finished), a review of Solo Build It (for Great Murder Mystery Games and then here).

And some stuff coming up that may distract me from that lot: Getting Sword Day (a freeform) into a publishable form, editing When in Rome (for Freeform Games), developing Second Watch (the freeform I co-wrote last Peaky) for Consequences, Volume 2 of The Peaky Files.

Bundle of Holding

Sometimes, I forget I have a games company.

I run Freeform Games with Mo Holkar. We publish murder mystery games - but they’re actually larps in disguise. Our target market is ordinary people rather than gamers, so we don’t tell them that they’re roleplaying or larping.

Our games don’t involve polyhedral dice (or dice of any sort) or complex rules. Most of them are set in the real world. We do have a small number of games with magic in them, but our games don’t have elves or spaceships or vampires. (Yet - you never know.)

So when I’m hanging out at Continuum or Furnace and chatting to people like Dr Mitch, Graham W, Graham Spearing, Paul Baldowski and the many others forging their creative path in tabletop roleplaying, I sometimes feel a bit inadequate.

So please forgive me for being dead chuffed that the prestigious Bundle of Holding is currently running a murder party bundle featuring eight of our games!

As I type this, we’re only a few days in and already we’ve raised nearly $9,000 and sold over 280 bundles. Woo hoo!

We have no idea how this will impact on our regular sales, but given that our target market doesn’t really know what Bundle of Holding is, and two of our most popular games aren’t included in the bundle, then I’m hoping it won’t have a disastrous impact.

It might even be good for us as a new bunch of gamers discover a way to introduce their non-gamer friends into this glorious hobby.

1000+ person hours of fun

Marcus Rowland writes about our Bundle of Holding offer here.

I like the bit where Marcus notes that there's 1000+ person hours of fun in the package. (I think he's exaggerated slightly - at my estimate, assuming each game is full and entertains everyone for three hours, then you've got over 450 hours of person entertainment. But why quibble?)

He picks up on something I noticed on the main Bundle of Holding page - and that's the comment about printing lots of pages.

Well, I suppose so.

But it's possible I've just become used to printing out lots of paper - it's what these games do.

I don't remember any complaints about paper use from our customers. So perhaps that's just gamers.

Not very “polished”

Here’s a mildly enthusiastic discussion about the the murder party Bundle of Holding.

The comment about our games not being “most polished” is fair, but that’s because we’re aiming for the “readable by people with bad eyesight in dim lighting” look. Which isn’t a jazzy look compared to a modern full-colour RPG. (But then I think most RPG designs are, graphically, a mess. I prefer clean and simple for my RPG design.)

Each to their own - although I admit we could probably do with better covers.

Current projects

These are my current games projects.

Death on the Gambia for Freeform Games

We changed our layout for our murder mystery games a few years back, introducing 8-page character booklets. Some of our older games are still in the old format, and as Death on the Gambia is one of those, I'm bringing it back into format.

I may also add a couple of characters. I want to add Aggie Marbles, a detective character who originally appeared in The Night Before Christmas and Dazzled to Death, but whom we have since added to Murder at Sea and others. And because she's a good guy, I probably need to balance that by adding a scoundrel as well.

I'm currently targeting early October (for the re-format - adding extra characters will take longer).

Sword Day for Peaky Games

Sword Day is one of my favourite games from Peaky, and I've been nagging the writers to publish it for ages. As I was becoming impatient, I asked them to give me access to the files and I would take it as far as I could. so that's what they've done.

Mostly I'm formatting the character sheets, and noting gaps (I have a list of questions).

The GM notes remain outstanding - things like the game timetable, instructions for preparing, and notes about the plots. The authors didn't need those (as it is all in their heads), but for everyone else they are essential. I will put a structure together, and leave gaps that then shouldn't take too much time to fill.

I should have that done by the end of October (at which point I'll need to go back to the authors).

Bubbling under

You could say that these projects have stalled, but it's truer to say that as I don't have unlimited time to work on this stuff. Typically I can only handle two projects (one of which is for Freeform Games) at any one time.

So these are simmering away in the background and will get their time in the sun when I have space.

Peaky Games Vol 1: Tornadoes, Swords and Pebbly Island

This is the next book of Peaky Freeforms. A few years ago I put together three books, each containing one game. The idea was that we'd sell them at conventions to support the Peaky Writing Weekend, but for various reasons that hasn't happened.

Following Larps from the Factory, I thought about creating a collection of Peaky freeforms, and this is the first one. So far I've got Small Town Folks and An Ecumenical Matter (both of which are already available for sale), and when Sword Day is read I'll drop that in.

So that's waiting for Sword Day.

Tales of Terror

Earlier in the year I tried to resurrect Tales of Terror, but as often happens with Tales of Terror, things stalled. I've got two things planned for Tales of Terror. The first is to get all the old tales from the website onto the blog, and the other is to turn my Tales in to a book.

Neither of these are high on my to-do list.

Other London

Other London is an urban fantasy setting that my good friend Jon created back in the 90s. It was a bit of this and a bit of that, and I've always thought we should turn it into a setting of some sort. As we're both fans of Fate (and Fate Accelerated in particular), and we like the worldbooks that Evil Hat have been putting out, we're starting to explore what an Other London worldbook would look like.

I'm very aware that the world is awash with urban fantasy games and settings, but maybe we've all got a fantasy heartbreaker inside us somewhere.

A Neolithic Fate Accelerated scenario

I spent a happy week on Orkney this summer with the family, visiting Skara Brae, Maes Howe, the Stones of Stennes, the Ring of Brodgar (right), Ness of Brodgar and lots of other ancient monuments.

I hadn't realised until I visited Orkney quite how close these sites are to one another, and that got me thinking about running a scenario of some sort set in Neolithic times.

If I can get this to work I may run it at GoPlayLeeds or Furnace next year.

Other Freeform Games work

I also need to reformat Snow Business and Happy Birthday RJ, so these will follow Death on the Gambia. Or I might resurrect The Reality is Murder, a game that I'm supposed to be editing (but haven't worked on in years).

Kindle gamebooks

Over the summer I turned the free version of our Way out West murder mystery game into a book, using Amazon’s Createspace. You can read more about that on the Freeform Games blog.

Way out West's cover

One thing that Amazon made it pretty easy to do was to turn your Createspace files into a Kindle file as well. And while I made a couple of changes to the layout (largely to remove some tables, which the Kindle software didn’t really like), the Kindle version of Way out West and the book version of Way out West are the same.

I must admit to having mixed feelings about creating a Kindle version. Just because I could doesn’t mean that I should have.

I’ve read three gamebooks to date on my Kindle Paperwhite (FATE Core, The Esoterrorists and DungeonWorld), and none of them have been completely satisfactory.

In episode 172 of Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff Ken Hite puts his finger on the problem. He suggests that there hasn't been a good graphic design that overcomes the difference between the schizophrenia of a RPG manual needing to both teach the game AND be a technical reference manual.

And that problem is compounded when you read a game on a Kindle. Kindles are great for long-form reading (like a novel), but lousy for anything where you have to flip between sections (like a gamebook).

I don’t think anyone expects someone to run a game on a Kindle - instead a Kindle edition should be about teaching the game. That’s certainly my reason for reading RPG games on my Kindle. But instead I’ve had to wade through pages of skills...

So I was in two minds about turning Way out West into a Kindle Edition.

My reasoning for doing it ended up as follows:

• I wanted to see what was involved in the process, in case I ended up doing it again. I know that’s not a particularly customer-focused reason, but it was still a reason.
• I had already spent some time thinking about how the book would be laid out compared to the downloadable pdf files. The Way out West book is ordered in such a way that it hopefully makes sense to anyone wanting to read it from start to finish. It’s actually ordered differently to the downloadable pdfs, which are arranged according to how they needed to be printed out.
• We really don’t expect anyone to run Way out West from the Kindle Edition. No, really. But they can download the free version for that from our website. So the Kindle edition is a taster, a marketing hook rather than the main product itself.

Having done it once, if we were to turn another of our murder mystery games into a book, I doubt I would bother creating a Kindle edition - not unless demand was unexpectedly high.

Creating a freeform economy

A good freeform economy will create tension and conflict amongst the players. A careful balance of demand and supply should ensure that there isn’t quite enough money to go around – and that in itself can drive characters and plot through a game. However, creating a good game economy is not as simple as just adding money...

There is no need to include money in a game if nobody has anything to spend it on. Just collecting money for money’s sake isn't a particularly worthwhile goal for anyone – even in the real world people accumulate money because they want to buy things. So if your game doesn’t need money, don’t include it.

If you’re not sure whether your game needs money, here’s a few that do and don’t:

• Hollywood Lies – money is needed to pay off blackmailers, finance movies, pay for scripts, etc.
• Death on the Gambia – money is needed for airline tickets out of Gambia, pay off debts, bribe policemen, etc.
• Death in the Fast Lane – money isn't needed in Death in the Fast Lane as contracts are more important (in the game at least) than the actual exchange of money. So Death in the Fast Lane doesn’t include money. (Note Death in the Fast Lane is no longer published by Freeform Games.)

So assuming that a game has a need for money, here’s a simple way of working out how much you need.

In a spreadsheet create a table with three columns. In the first column enter the name of someone who needs money, in the second enter the details of why they want it, and in the third enter the amount they want. So it might look a bit like this.

Bob	Pay off gambling debts	£5,000
Sheila	Get a ticket out of here	£1,000
Tina	Raise money to invest in business	£3,000

(In general it’s important that the figures are in the same ballpark so that everyone can trade equally with one another. If someone is much richer than other characters, it can cause problems with the game balance.)

Then you need to create a table for the supply. This time you are including all the money that the characters are starting with – along with any other sources of income.

(Other sources of income might be, for example, prize money in a competition or buried treasure.)

Marge	£1,000
1st Prize Snail Race	£3,000
2nd Prize Snail Race	£1,000

The important issue is to ensure that the demand is slightly more than the supply. Just enough money means that the players will be negotiating and bargaining with each other to try and achieve their goals, which is what I’m looking for. A happy ending (with everyone achieving their money goals) is possible, but not guaranteed.

In general, I try to aim to have a demand that is about 20% lower than the supply – although there’s inevitably some judgement involved in that figure. Ultimately, the only way to find out if you’ve got the demand/supply ratio correct is to test the game.

Other things to watch:

• Rich characters should generally be looking to spend their money, and poor characters should generally have things (items, information or skills) that other people want.
• Don’t create a character who is so rich that they can solve all of their problems by paying for them.
• In historical games, you may need to explain some typical prices so that everyone knows what money is worth.
• Be wary of having things that are so expensive that they unbalance the game. There’s nothing wrong with having them, just be careful of the effect they can have on a game economy.