2017 was a very productive year for Diegetic Games! I’ll give a quick overview of my releases, drafts, and conference attendance. Also, launched a Patreon and would love your support in making better games! Further, I started a podcast called Jamming on Games and have released three episodes so far.

Games Released

I participated in five game jams and I continue to love jams as a reason to quickly prototype and ship finished games.

In April, I wrote Good Morning Magicland for the 200 Word RPG Challenge. You put on a series of short shows on a local access TV station in a fantasy world. It’s a lot of fun to play and I may return to it someday to add some extra player scaffolding and more settings.

In June I participated in Game Chef and released my first larp, Across the Border. It’s about a covert border crossing and takes place walking around your neighborhood or a park. I’ve gotten increasingly excited about larps and expect to keep writing and playing them in 2018.

In September, I submitted another larp, Among the Mortals, to the Golden Cobra larpwriting competition. The game has two players peoplewatching in a public space and speculating on the fates of those around you.

In October, I submitted GIF-Apocalypse to the 280 Character Game Jam and it’s a silly little game played through Twitter using animated GIFs.

Finally, I created a Ghost Court / Paranoia mashup for the New Year, New Game, Game Jam. It’s called Loyalty Celebration and is pretty silly.

New Drafts and Upcoming Games

In the first few months of the year, I made significant progress on Make Haste! – a game where you draw a map as you narrate a quest. The game is in a pretty mature form and I need to make the final version of it at some point…

I also designed and tested a few games that have yet to be released as drafts.

I ran two playtests of BART Larp, a collaboration with Albert Kong that takes place on public transit. I have the draft of the rules half-written and hope to get it to a sharable state in the next few months.

Another larp I’ve been developing is Behind the Magic – a fantasy mockumentary that I brought to Metatopia. I’m extremely happy with how the game is shaping up. A current draft is available to my Patreon backers and I hope to release a final version this quarter.

I tested two other games that I’m designing through my Patreon – Duetta and Chaos is a Ladder. The former is a sandbox game with 30 minute adventures with two players that affect a persistent, shared world. The latter is a one player, one GM scheming game inspired by Littlefinger on Game of Thrones. Look for more information about both, later this year.

Conferences

I was fortunate to attend Dreamation, Big Bad Con, and Metatopia. All three were phenomenal and I’m planning to attend all three again this year. I ran my first (non-playtest) con game at Big Bad Con and plan on running games at Dreamation and Big Bad Con this year, too. If you’re heading to any of those events – come find me!

Final Thoughts

It was a super productive year and I’m looking forward to another high-output year in 2018. I’ll be sharing updates here on the blog but if you want early access to drafts and design notes – go check out my Patreon!

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