In my last visit to the Happy Jack’s RPG podcast, we talked about the idea of making a silent dice stacking game to play during the lulls at the gaming table when playing at a game convention. Since the idea cracked us up at the time, I’ve given a shot to making the rules. They may or may not work, … Read More
Tales of Estrogena Thunderbuns – Malice Update 2018.09.18
Convention games can be a little colorful. I like playtesting games at our local game convention (Strategicon), because you’re never going to get the same gaming group at the table twice. With Malice, it’s been interesting to see how regular con-goers who play in our games react to Malice, considering how different a gaming style the game’s framework uses. (This … Read More
UPDATE: A TOWN CALLED MALICE 2018.08.10
We’re continuing to work on Malice while maintaining momentum on our other projects going on this month, can’t have too many irons in the fire (heh heh). We will be running three playtests at the upcoming Strategicon, including a new playset entitled “The Sky’s Gone Out”. We’ve also managed to put together a beta draft we’ve put in the hands … Read More
Best Laid Plans of Mice and Monkeys – Why We Didn’t Get To Seattle
As I write this, I am not where I am supposed to be. This isn’t a philosophical treatise on anything, I literally did not expect to be at home today here in beautiful Summerfell (the headquarters of our operations here in Southern California). Instead, both Mrs. Monkeyfun and I were supposed to be in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, running games … Read More
UPDATE: A TOWN CALLED MALICE 2018.07.17
This update is primarily about the recent playtests run at the mini-con sponsored by the Dead Gamers Society gaming group in Orange County. These folks are good people – they have a consistent player group that normally focus on White Wolf-based products such as Vampire: The Masquerade, but have been a friend to Monkeyfun since we first started running playtests … Read More
Update: A Town Called Malice 2018.07.10
As we continue to develop A Town Called Malice, we’ve been running multiple playtest sessions to try out different scenarios with different types of player types. Luckily I have a pretty big swath of people I know willing to test things out. This past weekend, I did a playtest with an eclectic group that would not normally game together, so … Read More
Survey – What non-RPG book has most influenced your gaming style?
A few days ago I asked on Facebook what non-RPG book has most influenced the gaming style of my friends. You can probably guess some of them right off the bat – Lord of the Rings, Dune, Discworld, etc. But a few of them were a little interesting, enough to where I wanted to share them with you as possible … Read More
Behind the Scenes: Return to the Cruise Ship of the Damned
This year’s Spirit of 77 Day (July 7, for those of you wondering) we will be releasing our first sequel to a Spirit of 77 adventure, our first adventure Cruise Ship of the Damned. Cruise Ship was more than our first adventure, it was our proof of concept to confirm the modifications to the original Apocalypse World system actually worked, … Read More
Puzzles vs. Mysteries – Musings for the Hustling GM
“That’s the real question isn’t it: why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, The Mafia, keeps ’em guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents ’em from asking the most important question: why?” – JFK This weekend, I spent some time reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, What the Dog Saw. If you’re not familiar … Read More
The Joys of Updating Your Website
“I’m too big for muh britches…” As you can see, we’ve been adding new stuff to the site and updating things all around. It was pretty obvious the infrastructure needed some TLC and some added items all around. New websites feel like new cars – they depreciate in value the second you drive them off the lot and into the … Read More