My design contest has a name now! I've also added some additional information that should answer some of the questions I've been getting. You can check out the official thread here.

!!! Jake's Awesome Fantasy Game Contest !!!

I want to start a design contest. Joel and I discovered a game called Mythweaver:Reckoning on RPGNOW. Here's the link. While the game is actually pretty good, the copy in  the RPGNOW listing is pretty awful. It's kind of everything I hate about generic fantasy games. But... At the same time, maybe these are parts that could make an awesome whole? Here's the idea:

Challenge: Build an awesome fantasy game. Your game must meet these requirements.

-Must be 48 pages.
-Must include a distinctive core mechanic.
-Must include complete rules for character creation.
-Must include complete rules for magic.
-Must include a flexible skill system.
-May include guidelines for resolving actions during the game.
-Must cost just $3.00
-Must be made available for sale on RPGNOW

Deadline: Last day of August! We'll play the games at the August Go Play SE PDX, or I'll play the games in my spare time.

Prize: I'll do the art for your game. At least a cover and 4 illustrations. I'll provide publishing support as well, if needed.

Progress? This thread will act as a home for the contest. You can post questions, ideas and drafts here.

Who can participate? You can!

Who Judges? Me. I'm looking for creativity, originality and innovation. Solid design is a bonus as well. I'll be choosing whichever game i like the best, and my tastes are what will guide me.


More on the requirements:

-Must be 48 pages: I mean 48 pages as a finished product. With art and layout and stuff. Since this is a design contest I doubt anyone will be taking their game that far before the deadline (but I can hope, because I love finished products). So what I'm looking for is a text that will be about 48 pages when/if it becomes a published game. Does that make sense? So aim for a 48 page publication, not 48 pages of text!

-Must include a distinctive core mechanic: Distinctive meaning whatever you think it means.

-Must include complete rules for character creation: Or character generation and distribution, really. Don't feel tied to any traditional character creation ideas.

-Must include complete rules for magic: Or powers. Have fun with that.

-Must include a flexible skill system: The neat thing here is that there's no requirement for a combat system of any kind.

-May include guidelines for resolving actions during the game: Please.

-Must cost just $3.00: See below.

-Must be made available for sale on RPGNOW: This is not actually a requirement. I just think it would be fun to flood RPGNOW with a bunch of cool, cheap fantasy games.

Not soon! But it won't be too long of a wait.  Nick and I are getting ready for a new (and probably final) round of internal play testing. We pretty much have the rules where we want them, so now we're just playing with the text, talking about presentation and creating art. The art is what's taking so long. Yeld is easily the most illustration heavy project I've ever been involved with. It's illustration to page ratio is higher then Sea Dracula. Think about that for a minute!

Here's some of the newer art for the book.


Trapped in Yeld!


Cooking!


Good and Evil!

Robo Geisha!

Maddox and I argue a lot. Maddox is my 3 year old downstairs neighbor. Matt and Kims younger daughter. She likes to sneak into my room when I'm not around, play with my guitar and Yotsuba figures, use my bathroom, pull books off my shelves and jump up and down on my bed. Last week I was downstairs in the dining room reading a book when she comes running in from outside and right up my stairs. I asked her what she was doing, and she said she needed to use my bathroom. I told her no, that she could use the downstairs bathroom (which she had passed to get to the stairs). She shook her head and continued up the stairs. We argued about it for awhile. I pointed out that she had gotten stuck in my bathroom just the day before, unable to figure out how to open the door from the inside. She refused to see reason, and ran up the stairs anyway. Oh well.

A few minutes later I hear some banging from upstairs. I figured she had gotten stuck in the bathroom again, and I decided to leaver her up there awhile to teach her a lesson. But after a few minutes Bean (who lives upstairs across the hall from me) came down to say that she thought Maddox had locked herself in.

"Good. Let her stay in the bathroom for awhile. Serves her right"

"She didn't lock herself in your bathroom, Jake. She's locked in your bedroom".

Crap.

Maddox can't open my bedroom door from the inside. I can barely do it. And there's no key to my room anywhere. She was totally stuck.

In the end I had to pull the ladder around from the shed, and Charles climbed through my window to rescue Maddox. The photo is me, Matt and Sydney watching Charles try to get through my window.

(apologies to Michael Desing)

Joel and I found this game last night:

We we're totally being assholes and making fun of it's features, which include a distinctive core mechanic, complete rules for character creation, complete rules for magic, a flexible skill system, and in one of the supplements, guidelines for resolving actions during the game (which is awesome, because I usually like to either resolve my actions before the game or save them up and resolve them all on new years eve).

Then I noticed three things:

-It's only $3.00
-It's only 48 pages
-It's cover is the only one hat stood out in any way on the RPGNOW new release page.

So maybe it's awesome? The copy is hilarious, but if it crams into 48 pages what most fantasy games take two 150+ page books to do, maybe there's something there? I'm very tempted to buy it.

I want to start a design contest. Here's the idea:

Challenge: Build an awesome fantasy game. Your game must meet these requirements.

-Must be 48 pages.
-Must include a distinctive core mechanic.
-Must include complete rules for character creation.
-Must include complete rules for magic.
-Must include a flexible skill system.
-May include guidelines for resolving actions during the game.
-Must cost just $3.00
-Must be made available for sale on RPGNOW

Deadline: End of August? We'll play the games at the August Go Play SE PDX.

Prize: I'll do the art for your game. At least a cover and 4 illustrations.

Here's the official thread!

A few years ago I was putting a lot of thought into the way off sci-fi idea of HUDs. Heads Up Displays. I don't know if this is the right name for what I'm talking about, or even if there is one, but what I mean is the layered-over-vision display that the Terminator has, or that you often get in first person shooter games. Where you can look at objects and get visual pop up info menues  with all the information about the object you could want.Where you can access apps be glancing at atool bar on the edge of your vision. Like Windows for your face.  It seems like there was some development on this a few years ago. Sony has a projetc that shoots data at your eyeballs. Neat stuff.

Anway, this is kind of like that.

I mean, c'mon!  How are the rest of us supposed to compete with this?

The Brothers Bloom is pretty fantastic. I seriously loved it.

My mom's car burst in to flames and was completely destroyed last night. Here's the photos my brother took:

Nick Smith! Please write a game about Danny Rambo, Action Reporter!

I ended up accidentily taking most of May off. Here's what I did.

-Saw Star Trek, Terminator and UP. Interesting mix. Star Trek was sexy, UP was classy and Terminator was... kind of okay. The parts were cool, but the whole was lacking. So I'd sleep with Star Trek, marry Up and kill Terminator.

-Started a new comic! WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

-Read every Diskworld book that I own. This would be mostly the guard books and the Moist stuff, pe.lus The Truth and Monsterous Regiment. I want to be Sam Vimes when I grow up. Until then, I want to be Moist Von Lipwig.

-Read a shit ton of manga, including the entirety of High School Debut, which is still awesome. I really, really enjoyed Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and 20th Century Boys. Really amazing stuff.

-Spent time with my brothers and my sisters on their birthdays. Managed to almost getthrough my own birthday without anyone noticing.

-Wrote 2 games. Both may see print by the end of summer. I also got to play a little more Ocean and work on some art for Yeld.

-Knocked out some art for Jerry Grayson's Hallas. Working with Jerry is a lot of fun.

-Started participating in a comic book creator support group. This is helping my produce work on a more regular basis. Right now we're doing kind of bi-weekly meetings.

-Smoked 2 packs of Pall Malls.

-Dug my fan out of the closet.

-Played some more Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea.

-Rewatched the first 3 seasons of the Wire. They hold up, but just aren't as good as I remember them being. I did finally get to see the last two episodes of season 3. I always wondered what happened to Stringer Bell.

-Watched Please Teacher (pretty good), Ouron High School Host Club (up to episode 12. Fantastic!). Tekinkinkreet (really fantastic!) and Avatar season 1 (really mediocre).

-Broke up my long running weekly rpg game. Hurt some feelings and burned some bridges.

-Finished out my art classes at Parkrose HS and Fine Art STarts in Oregon City. I'll be returning to Parkrose, but not Fine Art Starts. I'll miss my students there a lot, but the job was becoming too difficult. I won't miss the insane commute.

GPSEPDX is old enoug to drink!

Go Play SE Portland #21

Sunday (Sunday! Sunday!), May 24th

Starts at 5ish-6pm, Guardian Games

Pre-meal at The Sidedoor

Sign up here or at Goplaypdx.com

Playlist:

Geiger Counter (facilitated by Brendan)

Ocean (facilitated by Jake)

Empty slot (why not offer to facilitate your favorite game?)

Is pretty sexy. I dig it the most.

My computer died.

This is problematic for a number of reasons.

I need to get a new computer asap.

So I can continue to work.

So I can have money.

So I can buy a new computer.

_____________________________________________

Seriously, I need a PC that can run photoshop. Desktop or laptop, I don't care. If anyone knows about any computes taht I can buy cheap,/steal/borrow/otherwise acquire, please let me know.

Jake

Here's an unexpected problem I've run into as a result of not updating my webcomic for a year. I can't find all my pages. A year ago I decided I wouldn't update again until I had 20 new pages done. Now I can only find 18 of them.

This is distressing.

new pages will be up soon.

I swear to god.

Tonight I'm burning bridges.

I figured out pretty early in life that I was only going to be happy when I was working. I mean, when I was working toward completing something that's important to me. It's amazing how easy it is to forget that! It's amazing how easy it is to get distracted!

I've finished all the art for Ocean (my new survival/mystery game). Except the cover. I'm feeling pretty good about it. Here's a panel from one of the pages.



I finished writing the text last month, but I'm still organizing it and... messing around with it. I figure I'll send it to the proof reader this weekend. I should be able to wrap up the whole project before the end of the month!

Sylvester Stalone
Jason Stathom
Jet li
Mickey Rourke
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Danny Trejo
Eric Roberts
David Zayes

Written and Directed by Stallone.

The Expendables

I say yes.

I'm already excited.

Dude!

After my class wraps in Oregon City I have a 45 minute wait before I can catch my bus. I usually get dinner. I prefer the Super Torta, but tonight I wanted chicken strips. Like really bad. So I went to Dairy Queen. Waiting for my order, I sat down at a table, pulled out Barry's copy of Dar: Volume One (I was too poor to get my own) and started reading. I've read most of it before, but it's been awhile, so I got pretty wrapped up in it and wasn't really paying attention to what was going on around me.

All of the sudden I hear a little boy say "That guy's reading a dirty comic!"

My first thought was to look around and see who was reading what, but as soon as I looked up I realized that the boy was refering to me. He was part of a soccar team. The whole team was there. So where his parents. And a whole bunch of other parents. And they were all looking at me like I just tried to bad touch their kid. One of them, his mother I guess, got up and kind of leaned toward my table to see what I was reading. Because it was totally her business. I was open to this page. She went back to her table, whispered something to another woman, and all of them (I kid you not), every single one of them, got up and moved two booths away. Which was about as far away from me as they could get. Fuck.

So I turn around and face the other way and mind my own buisness and go back to reading. A few minutes latter I hear a... snort... from right abouve me. I look up. There are two 12 year old looking kids leaning over the divider wall reading over my shoulder. I glare at them and they go back to their table. But as soon as their out from behind the wall I can see they're wearing boy scout uniforms! And they go back and sit with some other boyscouts! Fuck!

So finally my chicken strips show up. But they're in a to go bag. So I say I wanted them for here. I'd like to eat them in the restaurant while i read. The cahier/waitress/food handler person says "I think you should take them to go".

Fuck.

So I left and shuffled all the way down the hill to the transit station where I ate cold chicken strips on the bus bench. With gravy ( They give you gravy to dip your strips in. I know!).I was pretty embarrassed. I shouldn't be, but I was. DAR is a really good comic. I dig it a lot. There's nothing wrong with reading it in public. There's no reason why I should feel embarrassed about this. There's no reason why I should get chased out of a Dairy Queen dfor it!

I'm not going to the Dairy Queen any more.

Fucking Oregon City!

There's a... street fair/festival/art walk/thing that happens on Foster Rd here in Portland in September. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I've woken up late in the afternoon the last two years in a row to find my normally quiet/crime riddled neighborhood full of music, balloons, food vendors and art. And tourists. I want to participate this year. Ass a genuine Foster business owner (kind of), I want to have a booth and hawk my Sea Draculas at people.

I can't find a website, organizer or any kind of contact info for this festival thing. Does anyone know who organizes it? Has anyone ever been besides me?

Also, random art from my freelance folder:

Sea Dracula shirts are now available for pre-order! Here's the details:

Why pre-order? Shirts are kind of expensive. Help us out by pre-ordering a shirt so we don't go broke trying to cover the cost! Bonus: We'll give you a wicked high-five next time we see you!

How long does the pre-order last: We'll be taking orders until the first of May.

When will I get my shirt? We expect to send the shirts out on May 10th.

What do they look like? 2 different styles! Choose the classic Sea Dracula on a black shirt for $21, or the snazy Joe McDonald C-Drac on a white shirt for $15! Shipping is $5 (or $10 international).

Can I get both? Get both shirts for $30, and shipping is only $7 (or $13 internatinal)!

What kind of shirts are they? Hanes cotton beefy t-shirt, in M, L, XL or XXL. Let us know what size you want when you order.

Was that Vanilla Ice? Yup

How do I give you my money? Order here!

Sea Dracula is now available for FREE!



What does this mean? You can download the Sea Dracula PDF for free. You can make copies and distribute it for free as well. Knock yourself out!

What about paper copies? Nick and Jake will be giving away free paper copies of Sea Dracula at conventions, concerts, stores and special events for the rest of time. If you see us, ask for a copy!

I'm a store. Can I give away some Sea Dracula? Yes! Contact us at jake@atarashigames.com to find out how to get free copies of Sea Dracula to give away in your store! Or just make a bunch of copies yourself!

Can I still buy Sea Dracula? Yes! We're still selling paper copies of Sea Dracula to anyone who wants to buy them. The Wave 2 Attack pack (featuring all 10 covers from Wave 2) makes an excellent gift.You can buy Sea Dracula at both the Atarashi Games store and the un-store!

How will you survive without the income from Sea Dracula? We'll manage. You can help us out by buying our awesome Sea Dracula merchandise! T-shirts are available for pre-order now!

How awesome is this? It's pretty awesome.

I kind of want to play a game as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise (Not Kirk's crew, but a different 5 year mission) lost in the Warhammer 40k Universe. Think about it. An innocent, idealistic crew of humans and Vulcans adrift in what they are convinced must be the evil mirror universe from Mirror Mirror. The great thing here is that they can't loose, because Star Trek crews never loose.  They'll face off against the chainsword weilding, god-emperor  worshipping, power armor wearing, bio-mechanical monstrosity soldiers of the Empire with nothing but their easily shredable colorful uniforms, double handed hammer punches and photon torpedos! It would be fantastic!

We recorded both of the excellent Sea Dracula games from indie Hurricane 2/GameStorm 10 this year. You can hear them at the Sea Dracula site. Warning: They are awesome AND sexy!

D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium

This is the cover to the special limited edition version of Sea Dracula I'll be giving away at GameStorm. The only way to get it is to play in the Friday night Sea Dracula game. I only made 20 copies, so we'll be handing them out on a first come first serve basis. On Sunday night Nick will be hosting a special end of the convention Sea Dracula blow out! We'll be handing out special trophies to the 4 participating lawyers!

A side effect of the printer we used for the Yeld Whitebook was that it ended up on Amazon.com. I was a little surprised to find out that we've actually sold a few copies through Amazon. Cool!

The book is only $10 through Amazon, and does qualify for free super saver shipping on orders of $25 or more. So if you're looking to pad out an order for that free shipping...