Hello everyone!

Thanks again for all of your hard work. I really enjoyed reading all of your submissions, and there are some very strong games that came out of this. At the end of the day, I hope that YOU got something out of it!

I will be posting my comments on each submission here on this thread and on the blog. They are rather sparse, due to the time I had to go through everything, but I have no problem entering into conversation about them.

But, as there are indeed prizes and winners and such, here they are. Let me emphasize that these are my totally subjective decisions...

The Winners

Best Game Overall : Hell 4 Leather, by Joe Prince. It's just the cleanest, tightest, most ready-to-go of the games that grab me. Joe writes good games, and this is no exception.

Best Extra Credit: City of Refuge, by Alex D. I'm using this award to say "man, this game has SO MUCH PROMISE, please keep going with it." Cuz it does.

Best Pair: In Repose by Micah Bauer and Mark Silcox. Both exist in that "story/RPG exercise" space, each has a minimalism and charm, and I they just pair together better than any of the other two-game submissions.

Best Outside The Box: The Plant by Jason Morningstar. My criteria for "outside the box" is what surprises me, and this game surprised me like whoa both in form and content.

Best Presentation: Atlantis 2037 by Tony Dowler. Appropriate layout, good font choices, presentation that really reinforces the theme. Charts could be a little sexier. But of all the submissions this is the one that immediately hooked me graphically.

Special Prize: Best game suited for players who have no experience with RPGs: In Repose by Micah Bauer. I gotta give this game props. It's beautiful.

Special Prize: Bonus Art Prize: Hell for Leather by Sebastian Hickey. No contest.

Every Entry: I was impressed by every one of your entries in one way or another. Everyone who submitted a game is a winner! Hearty pats on the back all around.

The Prizes

For Best Game Overall: carry. a game about war. + any 2 PDFs of your choice.
For Best Extra Credit: Time & Temp (unbound print edition) + any PDF of your choice.
For Best Pair: Prizes: One of you gets Dance and the Dawn & one gets Urchin, + you each get any PDF of your choice.
For Best Outside the Box: Sweet Agatha + any PDF of your choice.
For Best Presentation: Keith Senkowski Art & Comics + any PDF of your choice.
Kevin Allen Jr. Special Prize: Sweet Agatha
George Cotronis Special Prize: $200 of original George Cotronis Art
Everyone's a Winner: Your choice of Annalise or Dance and the Dawn PDF.
Special Publication Prize: If/when you publish the final version of your game, email me to see if you're eligable for this (see below).

PDF options: Annalise, The Dance and the Dawn, Mist-Robed Gate, It's Complicated, or Murderland.

I'll be contacting the winners individually about prizes as well.

Archiving

I would like to archive the contest entries on the blog. Pease let me know if you DO NOT WANT me to include your entry.

But Don't Take My Word For It...

Keep working on these games if you still have any go juice for them, cuz they all have a lot of promise in one way or another. Also, remember the Special Bonus Publication Prize: any game that sees publication, in print, for money in a non-playtest final form will get the entire TAO Games digital library. Email me when/if you think your game is eligible.

Thanks again, folks. It was fun.
-ndp

Hell 4 Leather by Joe Prince

- Love the graphic

Overall Impressions: Nice, compact game. I would love some examples, of course, but it strikes me as one of those games that I'd just to have to sit down and play in order to find out of there's any procedural kinks. It strikes me as a good one-shot that would really respond to the players, as it's all about each players interpretation of the cards. All games benefit from groups that know each other well, of course, but this game is probably best suited for a close group, which I think means it also has potential for some really intense play. Good scope for the contest, well-imagined, probably needs some playtesting to reveal potential problem areas.

Hell For Leather by Sebastian Hickey

- Right off the bat I'm impressed by sheer length, not gonna lie.
- Ha! Rubber means eraser! Boy, I thought this was gonna be a different kind of game there for a second!
- Checkpoint generation is good. Can the teams have the same checkpoints?
- How do checkpoints work for co-op games?
- Ah, there are Hunters! Probably could have mentioned this earlier.
- I'm not clear on who has final scene-setting authority.
- Very solid and specific guidelines for what to do in play.
- Best guideline ever "You know when you decide there can't be any witnesses? Cue Felonies."
- Even though you're on a team, calling in help for a specific situation make it less likely that your team will win in the end.
- So you don't pick your target in the finale, it's always the person sitting across from you? Weak.
- Check out Death Stakes, you're doing something similar with your endgame rules. Also, S/lay w/Me for dice towers.

Overall Impressions: This looks like a fun game that I have no interest in playing! Maybe that makes me a wuss. But, theme aside, the game is well-thought out and obviously playtested. The constraint is integrated well and passes the "gimmick" test (can I do this as easy or easier with dice? no). I wonder if it really needs to be a team game, it seems like it would work just as well if not better if everyone is just on their own. Maybe that could be an option (much like all players on one team are an option). If the pitch hooks you, I see no reason to get this puppy out on the table.

In Repose by Mark Silcox

- Another "important a character from another game" idea - cool!
- I'm always interested in everyone plays part of the same character stuff.
- It would be nice to have a little definition of ID, EGO and SUPEREGO. I'm not as up on my Freud as I could be.
- In the example the SUPEREGO crosses off entries from the list, is this a rule that you took out? Or should it be there?

Overall Impressions: This strikes me as more of an RPG poem or exercise, to warm up for an evening of play or break the ice with people you don't know well. I would worry about creative exhaustion (responding to a new item every round, building on what's already out there and going towards your goal between 11 and 16 times in a row), but I imagine that that's kind of the point, to get your brain working. I do suspect that even 11 rounds may be too much (thats 33 chunks of dream already). Depends on how tough the goals are to achieve. In any case, some playtesting would show where to finetune that balance.

In Repose by Micah Bauer

- looks great
- now thats some minimalist rules

Overall Impression: I smiled all the way through that. Again in the "RPG Poem/exercise" vein of things the way I tend to think about them, I see absolutely nothing but coolness coming out of this. Also, playtested! Just a sweet little gem of a game, and while I'm not a parent I can totally see where this is coming from. Well done.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Bill White

- Bill, and I say this with love, you are SUCH AN ACADEMIC
- you are using words i don't understand, and i am pretty smart (metonymic?)
- whats the difference between an attribute and a feature?
- ah, so there's a GM
- why would i choose to keep the difficulty level secret or public? personal preference?
- why does the judge choose the notes? the categories seem pretty clear-cut, and it seems to me that it would be faster and more natural for each player to choose their own.
- looks like some text got cut out. wierdness track? wrap around? wha?
- whats the difference between the (+) and (-) on the characters intention card? are you supposed to strategize where you place tokens?

Overall Impression: There's a really good game in here, with some coaxing necessary to get it out. Reading it I get a strong sense of "playing this with Bill would be great, but I don't know if I could do it on my own." Some of the procedural stuff is pretty obtuse, and I would love a cheat sheet. The more fundamental problem I see is that this is dangerously close to what I consider overly mechanistic - there are a lot of procedures involved, but engaging with them takes so much effort that you forget to actually, y'know, roleplay. Sometimes these games would actually be better board games, but in this case I think some truly wierd and neat roleplay is in here. My bet is a lot of the mechanical interaction needs to be pared down. I really, really like the musical scale thing, but it may actually be a sacred cow....I'm not sure. And while this is all sounding really negative, that's because the fundamentals are very sound! There's a mindbendingly cool game in the middle here, somewhere. RELEASE IT!

Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Steve Dempsey

- is the Lieutenant that you write down not drawn?
- so you ideally want to save an NCO/Lieutenant, get decorated, and then survive until the end

Overall Impression: This sits in the poem/exercise category for me. At first blush I don't really get it, but I can see some interesting emergent effects as you try to narrate in the attributes of the other soldiers in order to get them killed off. I actually see this being the underlying system for a fun card game.

The Plant by Jason Morningstar

- I like going down instead of up (you still reference Up in some places in the text tho)
- I also like the extendible length of the game
- 21 is great (I had to, I'm judging the game!)

Overall Impressions: I really like this game. Solid entry in the "single-player game" genre. Except for the one reference to a GM, I don't see any reason why this would be inaccessible to anyone who enjoys choose your own adventure. I think you could have gone the direction of asking an open-ended question with the endings, but it's not necessarily a stronger or weaker choice than the way you did go. Very sharp writing, well-thought out location descriptions and interactions. People should play this if they haven't had the chance!

Well done everyone. Thanks for hosting Nathan and I appreciate your feedback. It was a fun, hard learning curve and I think I've come away with something I'll play for years. And I guess that's all your fault. :)

Sebastian.

P.S. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to read "If the pitch hooks you, I see no reason to get this puppy out on the table." Clarify?

Congratulations to all the winners and to Sebastian for winning in the Best Horror/Dark/Violent game.

edit: Also, where can I read Chained Souls?

Posted By: Nathan P.Chained Souls: Work Out Your Own Salvationby Timothy Monk

- So....are characters dead? Or not? (continued reading) Not. My bad.
- Spirit - if you fill in 4 sections, then have 4 dice, do you put two dice on each unfilled section? Or only 1 die on each?
- Chains - good technique, well chosen! I approve. I assume that I could claim someone else's Treasure as my Need (for example)
- Solid Fortune-at-the-End "narrate a bunch of stuff, then roll some dice" model
- So the Bible Verse thing only applies to verses that you gain from the Read the Bible action, right? If I have general Bible knowledge, I can't quote from memory?
- So what do you use Spirit dice for?
- It seems like shading in Spirit is bad, while shading in Soul is good? Or am I misunderstanding? Also, maybe call it Holy Spirit, cuz I keep forgetting which is which.
- What is Body for?
- Examples, please!

Overall Impressions: A potentially potent game that I think needs some more work. Some procedural elements aren't very clear, but the main problem for me is I don't understand what I'm playing towards. There's an implicit win condition (either gain Salvation, or fall pray to your Sin), but the text doesn't address this at all, either to detail it or to say that there is another goal for play. I'm looking for some structure to tell me when to stop playing. It doesn't need to be a per se win condition, but, like, do we play for some number of weeks? Do we play until one player hits a certain stage? Do we play until we're bored? That said, I can see some really interesting play the considers the nature of faith in the face of worldly influences coming out, especially with certain Chains (if I have a Need of sex, say, or a Treasure of political power).

Thanks for the feedback. I did this mostly as an exercise and had thought that I would just let the game sit, but now you've made me want work on it some more and do some playtesting (probably by Wave). In response:
- 1 die in each section of the spirit
- I hadn't thought of having someone else's Treasure as my Need, but that sounds great.
- The way I was thinking and wrote it you can only benefit from verses read in game, but I may want to change this now that you mention it.
- When you would put a die into spirit but it's already full, then you can put that die on any chain or part of the soul. This somehow disappeared from the text.
- Every reference to spirit in the text that is not a quotation from the Bible refers to the human spirit.
- Shading spirit is bad, shading the soul is good. I thought about pre-shading the soul during genesis, but that seemed odd at the time.
- Body is for nothing mechanically, it's only there because you have one.
- I probably should set some end condition. Although, the game is about an ongoing process that doesn't necessarily end in our lifetime, so this may be a chronic problem.

@northerain and any other interested parties: let me know your email address and I'll send you a copy after I alter a few things mentioned here.

Posted By: Nathan P.Hell 4 Leatherby Joe Prince

.
- In the example the SUPEREGO crosses off entries from the list, is this a rule that you took out? Or should it be there?

[...]

I do suspect that even 11 rounds may be too much (thats 33 chunks of dream already). Depends on how tough the goals are to achieve. In any case, some playtesting would show where to finetune that balance.

The crossing out of entries does fit in - remember, the ID player gives the SUPEREGO player a list of twenty items to use in the dream, but the superego player will only have to use a max of sixteen of them

I do see your point about the length of the game. Gonna experiment on a few of my minions with it: modifications may follow.

Hey Mark,

I'm glad you found it inspiring!

The crossing out of entries does fit in - remember, the ID player gives the SUPEREGO player a list of twenty items to use in the dream, but the superego player will only have to use a max of sixteen of them

I do see your point about the length of the game. Gonna experiment on a few of my minions with it: modifications may follow.

Hrm. I see the part where the 20 entries are written, but I don't see any mention of crossing things out until the example, is all I was trying to say. Also, in the example the SUPEREGO crosses off 6, leaving 14. I think the idea of crossing off the less interesting ones is valuable, I'm just not seeing the procedure spelled out, 's all.

I totally support minion experimentation!

Cheers Nate

That's made my day!

Thanks again to Sebastian - without his infectious enthusiasm I doubt I'd have finished the game. Big thanks to Andy Kenrick too, as his 6 Bullets for Vengeance provided a great deal of inspiration.

Good work everyone, I had loads of fun. I'm off to celebrate with some eggnog!

Posted By: Nathan P.The Piper at the Gates of Dawnby Bill White

- Bill, and I say this with love, you are SUCH AN ACADEMIC
- you are using words i don't understand, and i am pretty smart (metonymic?)

In my cups I aspire to the Gygax Chair in Role-Playing Studies.

- whats the difference between an attribute and a feature?
- ah, so there's a GM
- why would i choose to keep the difficulty level secret or public? personal preference?
- looks like some text got cut out. wierdness track? wrap around? wha?
- whats the difference between the (+) and (-) on the characters intention card? are you supposed to strategize where you place tokens?

Yeah, all of that stuff needs to be tightened up.

- why does the judge choose the notes? the categories seem pretty clear-cut, and it seems to me that it would be faster and more natural for each player to choose their own.

No, that's the difference between the game and the fiction; you play your character, and someone else assesses what it means as game-mechanically. That means that in order to "hit the right note" you've got to role-play. It's a license to play your character, since if you want to be sure you almost have to ham it up.

Overall Impression: There's a really good game in here, with some coaxing necessary to get it out. Reading it I get a strong sense of "playing this with Bill would be great, but I don't know if I could do it on my own." Some of the procedural stuff is pretty obtuse, and I would love a cheat sheet. The more fundamental problem I see is that this is dangerously close to what I consider overly mechanistic - there are a lot of procedures involved, but engaging with them takes so much effort that you forget to actually, y'know, roleplay. Sometimes these games would actually be better board games, but in this case I think some truly wierd and neat roleplay is in here. My bet is a lot of the mechanical interaction needs to be pared down. I really, really like the musical scale thing, but it may actually be a sacred cow....I'm not sure. And while this is all sounding really negative, that's because the fundamentals are very sound! There's a mindbendingly cool game in the middle here, somewhere. RELEASE IT!

This is a thing I'm experimenting with, trying to make the mechanics drive role-playing. The usual approach to make a game more RP-intensive is to move away from the game-mechanical and be more free-form; this is what jeep does. But another approach that's not much tried is to shuttle rapidly back and forth between the game-mechanical and the in-game: set up an interaction, play it out, use the output of play as input to the next interaction. Boom boom boom. What makes that work is that you're clearly either in the fiction or at the table: acting in-character or acting as-a-player. Done right, I think you walk away with a strong sense of character.

The musical scale thing is neat, and resonates thematically with the title, but maybe it's too precious. But some cycle of deciding what to do, playing it out, and reaping metaplot-level rewards on the basis of how other players interpret your playing-out is the heart of the system. Everything else is scaffolding to let that work. I'll have to reflect on that for a future iteration.