Yes, at Gen Con Indy 08, we’re back!

The Play Collective returns for its second year, a juggernaut of gaming goodness, enthusiasm and energy! And this time, we’ve brought a friend…

This year the Play Collective and the bold adventure that is the Ashcan Front have joined forces to grow our space together. You’ll be able to browse the fine works on display in our half of the booth, then simply stroll a few feet to finger through the assembled ashcans offered by the Front.

The members of the Play Collective are brought together by our passion for independent publishing, creation and design. We want to share our enthusiasm, inspiration and practical advice. If you have a great idea for a game and wonder how to shepherd it through design, presentation, marketing and sales then you need to be right there at our booth, talking to us.

If you want to talk game design and publishing with us, the we’ve got a huge range of experience and skills so that we can give you the right kind of help. Graphic design, marketing, game systems, con presence, artwork, we have experts in every field you could want to talk about.

So, who are we?

The Collective is made up of Vincent Baker, Tony Lower-Basch, Emily Care Boss, Joshua A.C. Newman, Elizabeth Shoemaker, Robert Bohl, Matt Machell, Judd Karlman and me, Malcolm Craig. Every single one of us has been through the process of design, sometimes many, many times. Some of us are on the booth for the first time, others were part of the Collective last year. But, regardless of all that, we share an enthusiasm for what we’re doing.

We’re not just about talk though. We have all put our expertise into practice and the Play Collective can offer you a stunning range of the absolute best in games. We have brand new releases, recognised favourites, even some stuff you might not have encountered before.

Vincent Baker will be offering all his usual goodness in the form of the outstanding ‘Dogs In The Vineyard’, ‘Poison’d’ and the first Gen Con appearance of ‘In A Wicked Age’.

Robert Bohl will be stepping up this year with an ashcan of his punk-rock sci-fi game of teenage rebellion, Misspent Youth. Kick The Man’s face in while your friends hold him down.!

Emily Care Boss presents her latest work ‘Under My Skin’ alongside her wonderful games ‘Breaking The Ice’ and ‘Shooting The Moon’ and a free quickstart version of ‘Sign In Stranger’.

Judd Karlman will have copies of the stunning ‘Dictionary of Mu’ tucked under his arm and he’ll also be bringing the ashcan version of his starter story game, ‘1st Quest’.

Tony Lower-Basch brings you superheroes with heart in the form of ‘Capes’. But not just that! There’s a super-secret release for Capes as well! What will it be?

Matt Machell brings his brilliant game of failing conspiracies, ‘Covenant’. Not only that, but he’s bring along some ashcans of his skirmish wargame of two-fisted action, appropriately named ‘Pulp!’

Joshua A.C. Newman won’t just have the thought-provoking ‘Shock: Social Science Fiction’, he’ll also have the mighty ‘Beowulf’ in ashcan form.

Elizabeth Shoemaker will be launching her hotly anticipated game ‘It’s Complicated’. And she’ll also have copies of the Ben Lehman penned ‘XXXXtreme StreetLuge’!

And I,Malcolm Craig will be there with the new ‘Hot War’, a slightly new ‘Cold City v1.1′ and the indefatigable old warhorse of a|state.

In addition to all of the above, we’re delighted to have books by the originators of the Ashcan Front on our shelves. ‘Dust Devils: Revenged’ by Matt Snyder plus ‘Bachannal’ and ‘My Life With Master’ by Paul Czege will be available throughout the con.

So hey, do swing booth 2039 and say hi, check out some demos, have a chat and buy a few games!

The books themselves are finally printed. Kind of like this:

Fidlar Doubleday have done their usual excellent job, the book looks great.

For those who are coming to Gen Con, you’ll be able to get your hands on this little beauty (although, not that little at 204 pages) at booth 2039. Or, for those who simply can’t wait, you can pick it up at Indie Press Revolution. If you’d like to know more about the game, just visit our website.

Cheers

Malcolm

Despite my swearing up and down that I’d never release Poison’d as anything but an ashcan, I’m releasing Poison’d as something other than an ashcan. Alas me, forsworn yet again. I take comfort from the fact that surely by now nobody ever believes a single swear I swear.

But so yes, Poison’d first edition at GenCon, exclusively at the Playcollective booth.

It has a couple of small but slick rule changes, plus a nice piece of text about how to GM the game. It probably won’t answer all of Ralph and them’s problems, but it’ll answer the worst of them. I swear.

NAME OF GAME:
Hot War

AUTHOR:
Malcolm Craig

PUBLISHER:
Contested Ground Studios

ILLUSTRATORS:
Paul Bourne

PRICE:
$28/£15

PAGES:
204

SIZE:
Digest

DUE FOR RELEASE:
Pre-order from Indie Press Revolutionduring July 2008 (order the hardcopy and get the PDF free, pre-order period begins duringt he week of 7th July), see it at GenCon US (14-17 August 2008) on the Play Collective booth

DESCRIPTION:
A game of friends, enemies, secrets and consequences in the aftermath of a horrifying war.

Features stunning and terrifying artwork by Paul Bourne. Many elements of information in the game are shown through propaganda posters, protest sheets, memos, diaries and documents, giving a real feel for the world.

This alternative history/horror game for three or more participants has players dealing with life a year after the apocalypse. You’ll confront hidden agendas, sinister factional machinations and see the changes in relations with friends and enemies.

Hot War allows both short term and campaign play, with a system that allows the group to work out exactly the kind of game they want to play amongst the wreckage of 1960s London.

You can find out more about the game on the CGS forums.

A while back, I mentioned that one of the game I was working on was Hot War. You can find out more about the game in this post. Well, playtesting for the game has now kicked off in a big way and the feedback is rolling on in.

In fact, here’s some threads on that very topic:

Shevaun Frazier starts her game.

Neil Gow visits London in 1963.

I kick off my own playtest.

I should also take this opportunity to mention Playtesting.co.uk, a site set up by my good friend Iain McAllister to facilitate communication between those looking for playtesters and those looking to playtest. Check it out.

Cheers
Malcolm

We’re playing Beowulf for the first time tonight! Very exciting! Shreyas Sampat will join Emily Care Boss, Vincent Baker, and me as I figure out of I know the rules better than I think I do.

I also had a bit of a challenge with Dreamation: I’m running two games of Shock: in addition to the Beowulf playtest, and the Shock: games were filled to 200% capacity. Thank you Mel White, Judd, and Vincent for stepping up to help out!

Incidentally, Judd’s game Dictionary of Mu is in the coveted 10th place on the bestseller list over at Indie Press Revolution I haven’t been able to catch up! If you want to help me out on that, go buy one of the last two copies of Shock: or, if you can’t decide, buy a copy of Dictionary of Mu, too!

(Don’t worry. I’ve got a handful of copies of Shock: to sell at Dreamation if you’re waiting until then to get one!)

I’m releasing In a Wicked Age at Dreamation, and the time of preorders has arrived.

But more importantly, check out the cover illustration!

The fold goes between the topless sorceress and the whispering spirit.

In honor of J’s goat god and Julia’s queen…

It seems that battling monsters is becoming something of a theme with the Play Collective. That being the case, this seems as good a time as any to talk about one of my current projects: Hot War.

First off, what is Hot War, I hear you cry!

Well, it’s something of a thematic follow on to Cold City. It takes the same premise: that weird German technology was taken by the Allies at the end of WW2. The timeline is further forward, though. The Cuban Missile Crisis went pear shaped and the world became enveloped in war. In fact, why am I repeating myself? Here’s some intro stuff from the text:

“People around the world were only too aware of the threat posed by nuclear Armageddon. Cold War posturing, brinkmanship, puffed-up military parades, wars by proxy and boastful national pride all did their part. The public were not aware of the hidden apocalypse science.

By mutual consent, the erstwhile allies of Britain, France, the USA and the USSR kept what they had found in secret German facilities during World War Two hidden from view. They never mentioned the ongoing Underground War conducted throughout the 40’s and 50’s, a war that combated the remnants of wartime madness. A war in the shadows. They never talked about the frantic attempts to utilise the technology and find out what the other sides had in their arsenal. The atom weapons, intercontinental bombers and fledgling missile programmes were nothing compared to what could be unleashed by the twisted technology. Nothing.

On October 27th, 1962, the world ended.

Nobody is clear why, or how. The Cuban Missile Crisis was in full swing and tension was high. But to this day, there is no agreement over who fired the first shots, who decided to unleash Hell.

Most people expected the flash and wind of nuclear weapons. Most people did not expect the other weapons. Flotillas of Soviet landing ships appeared off the East Coast of the UK. The waiting troops were never briefed on what might come out of them. The country was being peppered by nuclear bombs. Miraculously, London was never suffered a direct hit.

Wireless and telephone reports trickled in from the Continent as mushroom clouds rose over Berlin, Warsaw and Paris. The reports talked of other things, of black masses moving across the land, of hordes of seemingly unkillable soldiers, of holes appearing in the sky. Then the continent stopped talking. Waves of static and precious little else.

The English countryside became a battlefield. Whatever the landing ships and aircraft unleashed swept down lanes and over dales. Britain fought back in kind. But things started to go wrong. command and control started to falter, communications broke down, discipline started to waver. All communications north of Newcastle simply stopped. Then the RAF carried out it’s most controversial mission since Dresden. Someone ordered the crew of a remaining Vulcan to drop a YELLOW SUN nuclear bomb on the research facility at Porton Down. Thus was born the infamous Operation INDIGO DIAMOND. It was later assumed that something had gone horribly, terribly wrong at Porton. The reputation of the RAF would be irrevocably damaged from then on.

Now there is only Hell. And Hell is right here.”

The focuses on London and the Southeast of England. I’m very deliberately not talking in the game about anywhere else, expect in the vaguest and briefest terms. I want to keep it focussed and claustrophobic. There are a bunch of misfits, the Special Patrol Group, who have the unenviable task of rooting out monsters, spies, seditionists, Soviet troop remnants in the ghettoised, partially ruined streets of London one years after the war, when some semblance of order is returning. Oh, and the Thames Estuary is home to ‘internment camps’ housing refugees from continental Europe and the rest of the UK in miserable, filthy, half-starved conditions.

If you want to know what I’m aiming for, then you can do no better than watch The War Game, a BBC programme from 1966 that was considered so disturbing that it wasn’t shown until 1985. This is one of the visual touchstones for the game.

The mechanics of the game are an evolved version of those used in Cold City and the first draft of the Hot War text will be finished by the end of December and be ready to go out for some external playtesting at that point.

So I’m soliciting volunteers who would be able to playtest it for a bit, be that one session, a few sessions, longer, even. Feedback on both the system and setting elements would be great and I’ll provide outlines of some of the stuff I’d particularly like looked at to each group.

Bear in mind this is early stage testing, so there are quite a few rough edges!

If you’d like to give it a go, then please do express your interest by emailing me at: malcolm [at, t

Threads that have so far been talking about the game:

The first thread, talking about the basics

Some locations in London

Some organisations of a military nature

The recent first playtest

Cheers
Malcolm

OK, I’m stopping with the hemming and hawing.

I’m getting to work on Beowulf. I’m making it in a form similar to Ben Lehman’s Drifter’s Escape, where there’s a story on one side and a game on the other.

In this case, the story is Beowulf, the complete epic poem. I’ve got the (flawed) 19th century translation from the Gutenberg Project and will be doing my damdest to make this a beautiful edition of the book. This alone is a project I’ve wanted to do for years — I’ve got it started here on my hard drive twice, but I think I’m up to it this time around.

The back (I have some book form ideas that I think will work nicely) — the “game” as it were — will be a hack of Vincent Baker’s Anthology Engine, the system behind his upcoming In a Wicked Age.

Stick around, both here and at Monkey Do, Monkey See to learn more as it develops! I’ll eventually be looking for playtesters, so if you’re interested, comment below!

-J