TALES FROM THE HAUNTED CORKBOARD (Game Concepts Inside)

Having moved and about to start on a new project, now seems a good a time as ever to take inventory of the big corkboard.

The big corkboard is a very important part of my office. It’s the place I use to keep track of any new games and concepts I have. Any time I think of something new, I write a little note for myself and pin it up on the big corkboard. This allows me not only to make sure I don’t forget it, but add thoughts and revelations as they randomly come to me. Stray thoughts in a spiderweb.

Roald Dahl famously use to keep a notepad with him at all times for a similar purpose. And with this culmination of fresh starts, I thought it would be nice to have a thumb through what I got.  See what y’all like. What you don’t. (I had to re-hang up the papers anyways.)
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The Projects

Protect The Sacred
Status: In Production

Protect the Sacred has long since graduated from wall to full notebook (It’s about to be two notebooks),  but it started on the wall and I’m just now removing it.

Protect the Sacred, my next big game project, is an anti-colonial magical pulp adventure in the style of Indiana Jones or Hellboy where you play adventurers with folklore based powers working to protect, preserve, and reclaim magic, monsters, mystical artifacts and more and as living culture. I’m planning a separate post soon describing my goals for the game on a mechanical, thematic, and narrative level. But I can tell you the original notes read things like “Inverse Indiana Jones- how ethical is ‘it belongs in a museum?” and “deconstruct the idea and role of a dungeon in an adventure...but keep the fun!”. But I think the biggest notes are “Anti-colonial, not decolonial” and “non-christian kitchen sink supernatural world. Let people define their own terms.” I can’t wait to show you how this has shifted and evolved already.

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These next few titles are still very much at the note’s stage. Some are about ready to make the leap to notebook. Some are waiting for the last little thing to make it click. Others are just a theme or mechanic.

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Brave_Heart
Status: Pre-Production
The game currently in the lead to be the next thing to graduate to notebook. Brave_Heart seeks to be a digimon-inspired game aimed at kids that seeks to capture the focus on the childhood emotional journeys of the original. All while weaving in the Tech wonder/fear of the early internet, environmentalism, and the pseudo jungian psychology that made it feel like smt for kids.

Mechanically, I want it to be dice and math light and thus more accessible for kids. I’ve been looking at diceless games like Henshin (by reckoning, still the best super sentai game on the market atm) and thinking about playbooks inspired by crest. I think there is something of value in asking kids what do they like the most about themselves.

Having these playbooks build energy makes the human side important and highlights the “boy” parts of boy and monster. I think my biggest sticking point atm is...how I integrate the tags I would love to use to let kids build their monsters? How do I get that to mechanically matter? I got inspired by the digimon cardgame with a way to illustrate the building of data in a digivolution. But there is a big mechanical gap I got to fill about how to make the “digimon” interact back. How do I make the monster part matter without sacrificing the math-lite feeling? How do I make them feel like part of the same game?

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Street Fighter Tactics RPG
Status: Idea on the board

One day I would really like to make a hard core tactics rpg inspired by fighting games in the style of LANCER. I think taking fighting game archetypes and martial arts styles and turning them into “licenses” in the form of “belts” would translate way too well. The biggest hurdle here is likely the amount of intense testing and balance this would take. I don’t have the audience to push this one the way it’d need to be. My own internal sense of balance is just not at that level yet where I could do it all myself.

At least not for big tactics games where I have to worry about ranges, damages, and the balance of a status effects in isolation.

But boy do I want to make it. The intense combat focus would just make sense, and I know I could give it something satisfying narratively with enough time. My gut reaction would be to tie it into some themes about self-improvement and development. The effort and work it takes to follow a passion.

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JRPG game Silver Disc Story & Weird West Sci-Fantasy
Status: Idea(s) on the board

I really want to make a game that captures the vibes and feeling SNES to ps2 era jrps give me.  But what I have on the sheet has been slowly branching off into two different games. I can’t tell if I actually want them to be two different games or if this is something that needs to be one. A lot of this game is going to build off what Protect the Sacred is doing. At least if it works.

But one part of this game really wants to be a classic sword and sorcery crystal fantasy. Something with airships and magic trains that evokes things like the classic final fantasies. I’m a big believer that all the best fantasies have a train.

The other is a big sci-fantasy weird west that shifts the focus to an indigenous perspective. The idea of a post alien invasion world people are forced onto as a metaphor for a reservation. Complete with an evil parasite empire to fight against.

Maybe this is a sign to make a system with two different settings? if so, how do I make the game itself matter?

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Goosebumps/quirky kids horror
Status: Idea on the board

I would love to make a game that captures the quirky horror of things like goosebumps, fear street, and are you afraid of the dark. The type of horror that made you feel like you were getting away with something as a kid. I’d want it to focus on investigation and keeping it together over combat. A spooky cursed town full of strange things. Maybe add a town builder to make it feel like home, even if this cursed town always has the same name.

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Anti-Harry Potter Magic School
Status: Idea on the board

Fuck Harry Potter and fuck terfs, but if anime and x-men has taught me anything, there will always be a craving for a world were you could go to a special school, learn about your cool unique little powers, and have adventures with high interpersonal drama. Superpower class will always be more exciting than algebra. 

But the thing that strikes me about these schools, whether we’re talking about HP or Percy Jackson, is that they are exceedingly eurocentric and white (the word halfblood wouldn’t show up in either text if they weren’t). PoC tend to be afterthoughts and set painting and I haven’t seen one not be shit and weird about indigenous folk. I want to challenge and push back on that. I think my tags system could bring a lot to a set up like this.