Ships On The Run, The One Left Behind, Play Ball, and Demon Fighting Preparation
WELL THEN. The Summer was a hectic mess, the start of Fall not much better, but behind the scenes things have calmed down ever so slightly and the kids are starting to sleep all the way through the night, so the wheels are starting to turn again. Let’s take stock of what happened since last time and what’s coming up!
A Stern Chase Is A Long Chase
The Fleet was once a great force, scores of ship projecting their power throughout the stars. That ended with one cataclysmic battle against The Enemy. What remains lacks the strength to stand and fight. Fleeing is the only real option.
Hope remains, however, because the Fleet’s flight is not without purpose. If it can reach its goal, a kind of victory can be achieved.
However, The Enemy continues to pursue the Fleet, determined to wipe out the few ships that remain. The Fleet will struggle to stay ahead of them as systems break down, ammo runs out, and crewmembers collapse from exhaustion. As it was on the oceans of the homeworld, so too is it among the stars –
I made another science fiction game! Written for a game jam, A Stern Chase Is A Long Chase uses the Breathless system. Short version, every attribute/skill is a die rating (d12, d10, etc.), and every time you use one (whether you succeed or fail) it downgrades to a minimum of d4, making success increasingly unlikely. You can easily reset everything back to their maximum values, but doing so introduces a complication.
In A Stern Chase, where a Fleet of starships are fleeing the Enemy across the stars, this translates to parts breaking down, fuel and ammo running low, and crew collapsing from exhaustion. The Fleet can always Rest, Repair, & Refit, but doing so means the Enemy closes in and makes everything more difficult. The Fleet will have to balance maintaining its capability, fending off the Enemy, and making progress towards its destination in order to avoid being overtaken and achieve its goal.
Stern Chase scratched a number of game design itches – I wanted to dip into game jam culture a bit more, I wanted to try a new system, it let me play with starships some more, it let me indulge in a Band of Blades!style campaign (that I’m still considering for other projects). It was one of those things where I saw the mechanics and the idea latched onto it. I’m pretty happy with how the basic game jam version came out, but I also think there’s room to improve and expand the game, so it’s currently ‘in development’. Right now it’s at a discount to raise funds for some cover art (oh my stars I’m budgeting), and on the design side the next steps are guidance for GMs on how to build and run the various missions and some examples of same.
The One Left Behind
QUILL.exe: Transmissions from the Black got an update! Something always gets cut from the final product, including stuff that you really wanted to have in there but just couldn’t quite figure out. This is especially true for anything made during a game jam, which QUILL.exe was, and it left a few scenarios behind. Now one of them finally got dusted off and finished.
Interstellar travel is a one-way trip, even now, and room on a ship is always in short supply. You took your chance to travel across the black when you got it, but in the process you left someone behind that you cared about and who at least used to care about you. The thought of it still rankles, light years later, so you decide to reach out to explain yourself, and maybe even make amends.
I’m also puttering away at layout work for a print-on-demand version of QUILL.exe. I doubt the print version will ever sell very much, but to be honest I’ll get a proof copy out of it and I’ll find it pleasing to add it to my own shelf.
Play Ball
I’m getting back into designing with Fiddleback Productions on a little game which will be quite a bit different from our last work involving artificial intelligence and interstellar exploration. Very early days, yet, but then the offseason always seems so long before opening day…
Squaring Up With A NaGaDeMon
National Game Design Month is next month! Which really means in a couple of weeks! AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!
NaGaDeMon is a ‘NaNo Rebel’ spin-off from National Novel Writing Month – instead of writing 50,000+ words of a novel, you design a game from start to finish, all within the month of November (you mostly see tabletop games, although some brave souls take on video games as their medium).
I found myself as a moderator in the NaGaDeMon Discord server last year (thanks to Tanya Floaker for bringing me on), and this year I’m also helping to host the ‘22 game jam over on itch.io!
QUILL.exe was actually my NaGaDeMon ‘20 entry, and I went double rebel and used ‘21 as an excuse to finish off Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage. This time I want to do an actual standalone game within the month, not an expansion and not wrapping up an existing project. For that, I’m actually reaching into the grab bag and pulling out the Lost & Found SRD. I can’t do any actual work on the game until November starts, and am still just figuring out what I want it to be about in the first place, but I’ll be spending some time reading the SRD and other L&F games to build up my knowledge base and idea bank.
The Extras
Sad Mecha Times with Silhouette Zero
I made a return to the Silhouette Zero podcast with Chris Ing (having previously been on there to run a session of Transit: The Spaceship RPG for him and Matt) to tell a story with Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage.
Want to know a secret? This is my first time playing LATSW as a two player game. I know, it’s terrible, a play mode of a game I wrote that I never played before. You wanna know what? I think it worked out pretty well.
Check it out to hear two mecha pilots and bitter rivals trying to find one another amidst the debris of the final battle, looking back at the war they fought against one another and towards a future they may never reach…
Something Cool To Check Out
I’ll usually want to do stuff in this space that I’m not already looking at with Cannibal Halfling Gaming, but it’s been months and I still find myself thinking of A Requiem For Horizon Prophecy Online: The Final Four. It is “a tabletop roleplaying game and adventure for one player. Your favorite MMO, Horizon Prophecy Online, is shutting down its servers for good, and with just four hours to go, you decide to hop back in with a new character and replay the starting area. What will you discover (or rediscover) about the game before it disappears? What will you discover about yourself?”
I’ve loved all the games I’ve done for Solitaire Storytelling, but this one has stuck with me, and I think that’s a pretty big deal all on its own. You can read said Solitaire Storytelling actual play/review here.
There’s a lot on the plate and more to come, so either you’ll be hearing from me a lot in November or I’ll be sequestered again until proper winter. In any case,
Until you catch the next Dispatch,
Seamus
Cannibal Halfling Dispatch 
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