Ed at Robot Viking just posted an interview with me on being a game writer, and about tragedy and art and why nice-looking chairs are no good if you can’t park your arse on them. He asks about my White Wolf stuff, and MSG™, which he’s been especially nice to (I have Ed to thank for the free version getting 1200+ downloads).
With a name like Robot Viking, you know what Ed Grabaniowski’s blog is about. Anyway, over there, Chris Braak wrote up a detailed playtest review of MSG™ Executive Edition today. He calls it “a hilarious good time”. Which is nice.
MSG™ Executive Edition can now be pre-ordered in print and bought in a lovely bookmarked PDF version at Indie Press Revolution.
The boys at IPR are very nice men. And they read everything they sell. Also, they distribute to shops. Which means I have distribution. Which is nice.
You can now buy MSG™ at the indie-rpgs.com UnStore.
I still have a handful in my mitts, which are still available for the price of £7, as opposed to the current Unstore price point, which is $20 (including postage and packaging, regardless of your location), and the Lulu price, which has gone up to £8.99 and is likely to go up in future for various reasons related to breaking even and the cuts that distributors have to take so they stay in business.
The UnStore is home to lots of brilliant games, my favourite of which is Dogs in the Vineyard, which I would recommend to anyone who is interested in adventure games. It’s one of the best ever written.
This is about as close to a launch as I’m going to get.
I finally got a box of copies of the MSG™ Executive Edition, mainly for the purpose of giving comp copies to the people who worked on it or appeared in it (namely Graham, Becky, Zara, Kiera and John, all of whom will be getting their copies in the next couple of days. Ben Baugh’s in the US, so I’ll send his separately); also, because I want to sell it.
Anyway, I’ll be flogging them at various events (The Crunch, the SCM Conference) and by request for £7 each. If you’re not close at hand, you can still buy the Executive Edition here, although with a bit of luck, we’ll have it with a distributor come the end of February. At the time of writing, I have 14 left in my hand. Drop me a line if you want one.
It’s been nice to play the game a few times in the last couple of months, largely with people with no experience of this sort of thing.
The sheet in the front is mine. The Rep’s name is Alexander Technique. But you can call him Alex. I didn’t win that game. I (and everyone else) got completely humiliated by Chris Stacey, who grasped the Soap mechanic in record time. He must have doubled his points by the end of the game.
[Edit: updated sale link]
Identikit one-name FHM pinup singer? Check*.
Doing the sexy office drone thing? Check.
Getting a sexy cyborg upgrade in a lift? Check.
Branded to all buggery (”Energiser™ Playboy™ Bunny,” anybody)? Check.
Crappy “Street” rapper to appeal to the urban demographic? Check.
Veneer of shiny efficiency, no soul allowed? Check.
Vast carbon footprint (check out the exhaust on the suggestive motorbike)? Check.
Unintentional glass ceiling misogyny? Yeah, I think so.
“If you work hard for your money, you’s a go girl.” Quite.
Edit: Graham also noted the heavy use of auto-tune in the song, an effect which serves to drain any individuality and rawness from the singer’s voice (and which may also disguise an inability to sing).
________________________________
*This is Ciara, like it matters.
Greg Costikyan is one of the original designers of Paranoia, which is a massively entertaining RPG that a lot of people like, and he has been in this game designing game for more than twenty years. Anyway, he reviewed MSG™ a couple of days ago. on playthisthing.com, which is a site that looks at all sorts of games. It was a very positive review. Which is nice.
In a traditional RPG, players are expected to cooperate with each other with the GM as a neutral arbiter; Paranoia turns that on its head by encouraging players to betray and backstab each other. MSG does something similar, but subtly different; it pits the “gamemaster” at the players’ throats, balancing things by having each of the players act as GM in turn. That’s an interesting and novel approach, as are several other elements of the game — the fact that it comes to a definitive ending in a single session, and that there are winners and losers. In short, it defies many of the characteristics we normally ascribe to a tabletop RPG — in the context of a very cynical, and very cool, cyberpunky future where even the minimal constraints on corporate action that currently apply are removed, and any residual ethical norms for businessmen are considered the domain of chumps.
Excellent, in a word.
Kiera again. If companies decided that they were going to get the marketing consultants in on your brain, they’d call it “heADspace™”.
Zara took a whole load of pictures of Kiera and Bauhaus John on Thursday night. It was a pretty hilarious evening.
Nothing more needs to be said. Cheesy, flaky MSG-laden goodness.
BEKI80 asks: who needs a desk when your brain is connected to the Company network?
Zara’s doing a photo shoot with some more models tomorrow.
This is from the imminent Executive Edition. You can still buy the Beta Playtest, though.
The successful applicant smiled
Brightly, said, “Of course not, no,
Silly,” could not hide her excitement,
Still tightly clutched the mobile while
I tried to confide these doubts I had:
“Don’t let it overtake you, please
Don’t allow them to make you
A slave.”
She hugged me, ruffled my hair.
She arrived there prompt, Monday, nine.
Oriented, one day turned into a month,
I come to her office to see her for lunch today.
At reception, hand on pencil hip,
Her smiling shining lips say
“How may I help you?”
“Are you free?”
I see the light they put by the socket
At her temple flick on,
Her eyes flick out;
“I have pressing work commitments.
Next time, make an appointment.”
Smiling she turns on a spike, clatters
To the lift, resculpted, fully trained,
Supplied with the best equipment.
A vital associate announcement, courtesy of BEKI80.
This is going to be in the typo-free, expanded, corrected and Nu-Improved Executive Edition of MSG™, which, when I have inserted some promised illos from my friend Zara, is coming soon.
Because the new version is coming so soon, I’ve extended the limit on downloads of the free version until December 9th.
io9.com is on the Gawker network. It get stupid numbers of hits. It is a website that promotes and discusses all things science-fictional and almost science-fictional. And all things geek, really.
Anyways, io9 plugged MSG™ today. So. Pleased.
FREE Promotional edition (available until 25th November 2008)
Here we go, then. This is what I have been working on recently. MSG™ is a game of negotiation and conscience for three to six adults, what I wrote, designed and illustrated myself, with help from my ubiquitous partner in crime Becky Lowe and my genius colleague Benjamin Baugh. It’s the genetically modified bastard child of Naomi Klein, Chris Morris and Dilbert.
It’s an 88-page illustrated paperback book, and it’s £5.99 in print, and £1.99 for the pdf.
But for one week only, it’s available on PDF format for free.
FREE Promotional edition (available until 25th November 2008)
Wood is, though. He's a freelance writer, based in Wales. He writes for magazines and things, and even edits one. His work has appeared in nearly forty books for a very well-known publisher of tabletop role-playing games, the ones with the funny-shaped dice and everything, but that doesn't make him a bad person. His driving licence says he's called Howard.
Some other people write here, too, sometimes. Some of them are real.
We started this as a fiction project, and although we've descended into the world of blogging, our regular bite-size serials still persist, if only for the sake of our sanity.
Recently, we started publishing. Here's our storefront.
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