Definitely!
Seamus Conneely
Creator of
Recent community posts
From the full CHG review: "Aside from a lot of replay value, Rom Com Drama Bomb is a great example of a game that commits fully to the bit and steeps itself in the tropes of the genre it is hoping to let players experience. It can be as over-the-top and ridiculous as any romantic comedy movie… with the same potential for serious confrontations and emotional moments."
Solitaire Storytelling Actual Play Review
"Overall, I hope Forrest's logs have conveyed the most important thing about CHVLR. It's a very well written entry to the W&A pantheon, every prompt made me think or feel something, and I was rooting for Forrest to survive even thought I knew he was almost certainly doomed."
Too early to start working on a game (unless you want to get really rebellious, hey, I'm not the game design police), but not too early to start thinking about one!
Having already written a mecha game from the perspective of a pilot (Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage) and another from the perspective of the mecha itself (Tales from the Cockpit), the notion of the final part of a trilogy appeals to me: a game from the perspective of the mechanic who has to keep repairing the mecha and sending it back out into combat, again and again, knowing it and its pilot likely won't survive in the end.
What are other people thinking of forging to slay the NaGaDemon ,starting in just about a month(!!!)?
"The individual Editions of Clever Girl bring a unique premise to the Wretched & Alone landscape, which is exactly what you want to see when reading works based on an SRD. On the mechanical level they don’t individually do anything particularly innovative, sticking to the mold created by the original game and document and used by other games in the space. That’s fine, because together the two editions do a great job of taking a solo idea into a duet form in a way that’s more than just ‘add a player and talk to each other’, complimenting each other in both the general writing style and in each prompt. With further advice for additional players, multiple humans, multiple raptors, and cooperative and competitive approaches to each, it’s… well, quite Clever." Click the link for the full CHG review!
"The Price of Coal is not a game with a happy ending – just as with those real people whose story the game is based on, while individuals may very well scrape something together in the epilogue it is by and large a tale of struggling and then failing. It is, however, an excellent example of how a game can use prompts and character relationships to help us tell a story about such a struggle, grounded in real events, a story of where we’ve been and how we got here, and a reminder of the Price that had to be paid. It is a story worth telling." Click the link for the full CHG review!
No Map, No Plan is about a hapless thief (or thieves) attempting a heist with no idea of what they're getting into or how they're going to get out. Thanks for providing the lightning bolt of mechanical inspiration that got it going!
"Every game within World Ending Game is tailored to [evoke an emotional response] in a specific way, letting you draw out a variety of such responses to your liking as the group picks and chooses both the games to play and what to do with them."
- Follow the link for the full CHG review!
Drpping in seeking approval for the Sci-Fi Is The Best bundle, which Pass the Remote was submitted to. Launches in about 13 hours and Twitter has been eating messages. https://itch.io/b/1790/sci-fi-is-the-best
A CHG actual play review!
"It’s a decidedly creepy game with a distinct lean towards the eldritch and squamous, gamified enough to keep things interesting, and (thanks to said mechanics and to the variety) possessed of a good amount of replayability – it will nearly be impossible to tell exactly the same story twice even if you wanted to."
Back Again from the Broken Land "will give you longing to see Rose Cotton again, smoking with a friend on the shattered walls of Isengard, a king saying that you bow to no-one, a wound that drives you to sail west, and other ‘great stories… the ones that really mattered.’ That makes it a great game, indeed."
You can read the full Cannibal Halfling Gaming review here.
"With a pocket-zine and a deck of cards, A Tale Before You Go can help you whip up a story in quick order, with some evocative setting bits and a straightforward story mechanic. Now that I’m trying to sum it up (and since the story can be told orally as easily as written down): if you’re needing a story for bedtime with the kids, keep this game at hand."
You can read the Cannibal Halfling Gaming actual play review here.
"A Requiem for Horizon Prophecy Online: The Final Four takes you on a nostalgia trip that you actually didn’t take the first time around, and it pulls it off very well." You can read the full CHG actual play and review here:
https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2022/04/04/solitaire-storytelling-a-requiem-f...
Funnily enough, the repairs getting removed is part of the rules as intended… but not, in this case, as interpreted! Making a note to look into better wording for a v1.1 update. Thanks, and thanks very much for giving the game a try.
P.S. I’ve actually never really read a Carta game or the SRD in-depth, but now I think I have to!
The phrase 'stern chase' keeps popping into my head. There are a few ideas under that umbrella though. It could be a group trying to escape from behind enemy lines as their pursuers close in, or a ship (sea or space) trying to ourtun some pursuit or reach some objective before it's too late.
Either way, the Pressure clock mechanic from Band of Blades is hovering nearby. Whether or not there will also be a time clock will depend on what premise I go with. If there's an objective other than "Stay Ahead of Pursuers", that could be where it pops in.
Just posted a short actual play and review as part of Solitaire Storytelling!
There's a link in the PDF, but as of this comment it's a dead end - updates on the Kickstarter say the soundtrack is coming later this year, and to try using the Artefact soundtrack for now. Gave that a shot, and it worked pretty well (although the track names don't go 1:1 with the Bucket time periods, so check the actual lengths of the tracks).
Right now it looks like I'll have a 1-2 player card-based game about a pilot stuck aboard their wrecked mecha after the final battle, systems failing and hoping for rescue, done on time. Granted when I say 'done' it won't be all fancy, a beta test version basically that will see some revisions and maybe some additions and definitely overall appearance improvements, but still!
Hey Levi!
Long shot given the time that's passed, but if you're still looking for a partner I've played through a few campaigns worth of Exalted and would be really interested in trying to tackle that setting through another angle. Let me know @RGM79Ace on the Twitters if you're up for it, and if the likely has occurred and you already have a project up and running, no problem and good luck!
- Seamus
Well, I was part of the design team for TRANSIT: The Spaceship RPG, a PbtA game of Artifical Intelligences controlling starships and exploring the galaxy and their own existence. Obviously you should buy a copy, but if you want to respond to it for the jam give me a ping and I can send a PDF your way.
I played For The Queen recently, and that struck a chord. A very interesting storytelling experience, with an ending set not-quite in stone.
Oh, and speaking of story games pretty much any of the games in Seven Wonders would be interesting, although I'm partial to Heroes of the Hearth and Before the Storm.
Hey everyone!
My name is Seamus Conneely, writer over at CHG and sporadic game designer. Favorite animal . . . probably dogs.
This kind of design scene is completely new to me, so I'm not really sure what games I'd like to respond to . . . but reading through the above, Exalted comes to mind, and the Emotional Mecha Jam was very impressive. I'll try to think up a few more and post them in the Things to Be Inspired By topic!