Jonas Ferry’s blog

I ran One Can Have Her on A Con of You this Saturday and just posted an actual play report on the Forge.

Cover of One Can Have Her.

On 24/7 I published my game noir One Can Have Her. This coincided with an article in the Escapist called Girlfriend, Rat by Russ Pitts.

In One Can Have Her you play male noir characters with a crime each in their past, a relationship to the same femme fatale and a possible wonderful future. The only thing standing in the way of that future is the other characters.

You can look at previews of the game or, if you like, order the PDF for $10. Kalle Bergman posted the first review.

Night Porter’s Point of View (original title: Z punktu widzenia nocnego portiera) (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1978). A Kieslowski documentary of a Polish watchman. His views are harsh, he thinks thieves should get their hands cut off and he catches people who fish without a permit in his spare time. But he’s also human, in that he’s lonely and dreams of a better world. I saw it as part of a double bill on the Gothenburg film festival. [8/10]

Views of a Retired Night Porter (Andreas Horvath, 2005). This was the second of the double bill films. Horvath tracked the same man down almost 30 years later and continued the interview. The man was older, but still lonely and still with a grim view on life and humanity. We got to know he had a wife, but that she had died. Ina way it felt like Horvath tried to give the man a second chance, a chance to redeem himself to the world. [7/10]

Keillers park (Susanna Edwards, 2006). This was also part of the Gothenburg film festival and a very important film that shouldn’t be needed. Keiller’s park is a park here in Gothenburg where a homosexual man was murdered by two satanists in 1997. I’d say their religion had little to do with it, but it’s hard to say why they did it, really. People still call the park “killer’s park”. What makes it extra sad is that the man’s boyfriend was initially the main suspect and has talked about the abuse he suffered from the police for his sexuality. [8/10]

Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (original title: Rupan sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1979). This is not the third film in a series, but a film on Lupin the third, the world’s greatest thief. He decides to rescue a girl from the castle of Cagliostro, while looking for a hidden treasure. Even though it’s quite silly it manages to have enough of characters and story to be fun. [7/10]

Sílení (American title: Lunacy) (Jan Svankmajer, 2005). Jan Svankmajer’s films are strange and often gruesome, and when he does one based on Poe and Marquis de Sade you can guess the result. I enjoyed some of the philosophical parts, like who is mad and who is normal, but the film itself was tedious. I recommend his earlier works. [5/10]

Holly (Guy Moshe, 2006). Holly is a twelve year old Vietnamese girl sold to prostitution in Cambodia. Moshe both wrote and directed the film that is based on his own experiences of Cambodia. This was another festival film, and he was there and presented it. He talked about the horror of having eight year old children trying to sell you sex, and of the threats of filming on the actual locations of the brothels. In the film, Holly befriends an American tourists that wants to help her escape. I think the film’s subject matter is more important than the film itself, and in part rate the film based on its relationship to the world it portrays. [7/10]

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985). Pee-wee is a very silly grown man that gets his bike stolen. He goes on a great adventure to get it back. Too bad the main character was really annoying, that the situations were uninteresting and that the film couldn’t decide if it should please children or adults. [2/10]

Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006). Little Miss Sunshine takes a look on American beauty contests for children. It’s a strange world with a lot of messed up people in. For a feel-good film this is about as good as they get. The young girl Olive wins a place in a big competition by chance, and her dysfunctional family tries to help her win. Her performance on stage puts an unsubtle spotlight on what these competitions resemble. [7/10]

Porco rosso (original title: Kurenai no buta) (Hayao Miyazaki and Tony Bancroft, 1992). The crimson pig Marco is a seaplane pilot in the 1920s. He battles air pirates, duels for the woman he wants and lives alone on a secret island. He’s also the only humanoid pig in a world of humans, which makes him a very special character. I’ve seen it before and it’s a beautiful film. I increase my rating, as I usually do with films I re-watch, from 6 to 7. [7/10]

The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma, 2006). The story of the murder of a young American woman in 1947. Or not that much about her, I think, more about the people put to solve the case. There’s a too obvious love triangle that doesn’t seem that interesting. It’s based on an Elroy story, so there’s lots of characters without any real heroes and a lot of tangled plot. [5/10]

The new website of my noir game One Can Have Her is up! The illustration is by Tobias Radesäter, the man behind the comics super hero game Supergänget, who’ll do all of the illustrations to the game.

For those of you fluent in Swedish, Anders Sveen has posted his thoughts on the game/playtest of One Can Have Her at OmniCon.

He enjoyed how getting the cards at the start of the game makes you able to somewhat plan your character’s story line, how the list based character creation got him into the genre and how resolved conflicts actually are resolved and not returned to.

He also ponders whether you have to play to win for the game to be fun and if having to play cards that makes you lose conflicts can lead to the problem of introducing conflicts and resolving them yourself.

One Can Have Her is back. Peter Nordstrand rekindled my interest in the game a while back, so now I’m playtesting and writing again. I’ve asked some people whose opinions matter to me to do external playtests, and I continue doing my own.

I’m confident the game works after playing this Saturday at Peter’s mini-convention OmniCon. Actually playing this time, with Peter as game master. That helped me identify a couple of things that need clarifications.

Oh, and I won. I guess you can talk about winning in a roleplaying game about making the others take a fall for you to reach your dreams and get the girl? My aggressive doctor managed to become famous and work in high society. He originally wanted to become famous for legalizing abortion in 1960s California, but had to settle for the fame of paving the way for a legislation. He then rejected the femme fatale, because she reminded him of his former life.

The two other player characters, a paranoid government agent and a conflicted nightclub singer, ended up in jail for 30 years and dead by suicide floating in a swimming pool respectively.

Run, Lola, Run (original title: Lola rennt) (Tom Tykwer, 1998). Lola has to bring her boyfriend 100000 marks in 20 minutes to save him from a jam. By presenting multiple stories where a small change can make a big difference, the film examines chains of different causes and effects. Franka Potente, who plays Lola, is a good actor. The different versions are kind of fun, with mixed-in animations and other playful elements, but overall pretty cliché. [6/10]

Lola’s boyfriend and Lola in Run, Lola, Run (1998).

Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981). A kid is kidnaped by time-traveling pirate-dwarfs, and has to help them handle the Supreme Being. A very gilliamesque film, full of weird characters and situations, and a lot of humor. [7/10]

Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959). A heist noir film where an old man hire two guys to rob a bank. One of the men is black and another racist, which leads to trouble. The film presents the form of racism that’s both pointless and self-destructive, where the white man’s display of power in the film just makes things worse. [8/10]

Dödsklockan (Daniel Alfredson, 1999). A gang of Swedish hunters kills an old woman by mistake and agrees to cover it up, but another man starts blackmailing them. The highlight of this film is singer/actor Loa Falkman as an evil, but understandable, man. [7/10]

Winter Sleepers (original title: Winterschläfer) (Tom Tykwer, 1997). When a translator, a horse owner, a ski instructor, a nurse and a film projectionist cross paths people cheat, lie and die. Different lives and stories tied together by circumstance in a good and visually very beautiful film. [8/10]

It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946). After a startling space animation cooler than the introduction to Superman Returns, an angel gets a job to earn his wings. He’s supposed to help a self-sacrificing man find happiness, and finds him at an all-time low during Christmas. James Stewart is good enough, and the film actually works until they get carried away towards the end and showers the viewer in melodrama. [6/10]

King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005). A couple of former apes travel to a remote island and bring back a current ape. The big ape runs amok in the big city and climbs a skyscraper with a woman in one hand. That’s the whole story. For some reason Peter Jackson thought it wise to add a lot of shots where the ape wrestles dinosaurs, where the hairless apes fight giant bugs and so on. This did nothing to improve the experience from the original from 1933. [6/10]

The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927). A man moves in with a family while the city is plagued by a killer of blonde women. The man behaves in strange ways around the blonde daughter of the family, and goes out late at night for unknown reasons. Soon they suspect him of the murders. A great silent film by Hitchcock. Some of the special effects are really cool, like a see-through floor, and the suspense from his later films is already present. [9/10]

The Devil’s Backbone (original title: El Espinazo del diablo) (Guillermo del Toro, 2005). A young boy moves to an orphanage and realizes it’s haunted. I expected more from the premise, but was somewhat disappointed in the actual execution. [7/10]

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946). A crime is committed with two boys and a girl involved. When they grow up she marries one of them, but is drawn to the other. A nice love triangle, with great characters. Martha is a true femme fatale in this noir, as she’s constantly changing her allegiances and her story whenever it suits her. [8/10]

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). A down-and-out private detective in a future city is hired to find a bunch of renegade replicants, artificial people. The beginning was kind of lame, as I don’t think you should ever need to have a introduction text in a film. The music is very suitable, and the film is a good example of science fiction that’s about ideas and feelings as much as special effects. [9/10]

Harrison Ford as Deckard in Blade Runner (1982).

Look at Me (original title: Comme une image) (Agnès Jaoui, 2004). A French author is surrounded by people that want to be noticed, but he’s not able to see anyone but himself. A feel-good film that’s still watchable, maybe in part because I really like films about writers. [8/10]

Kes (Ken Loach, 1969). A young boy adopts a pet falcon, and is more comfortable with that than with people. You get a glimpse of a life where peoples’ greatest ambition is to work in the local mine and get drunk on weekends, and where people that are different are ridiculed. [8/10]

It’s All About Love (Thomas Vinterberg, 2003). Something is killing people around the world in this film set in the near future, but the focus of the film is on a relationship on the brink of ending. In some ways the film is really strange, but if you accept it as a fantasy it’s not that weird. I’ve seen it before. [9/10]

Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965). A secret agent is on some kind of mission in a dystopian future city called Alphaville. The plot is never clear and the characters always bizarre, and you can really tell Godard was inspired by 1984. [7/10]

I’m happy that the Noir website has as much activity as it has, considering the game isn’t even released yet. A lot of great people have showed up and been interested, which is great.

Apart from a lot of short posts, I’ve written a longer blog entry at the developer blog called Rapporter från skyttegravarna (”Reports from the trenches” in English) on the merits of actual play reports. I’ve also written a post in the prep thread for a chronicle, where I outline the storyteller preparation method presented in the book.

Under downloads you can find a preview of the whole first chapter of Noir.

The Noir front cover illustration.

I’m soon to be published as a contributor to a new Swedish roleplaying game called Noir. It’s a film noir inspired game set in a dystopian alternate world, a kind of mix between The Maltese Falcon, Sin City and 1984. There’s a huge empire ruled by different noble families, but the focal point of the setting is the capital of the empire called Sandukar. Sandukar has parts that are heavily controlled by the all-ruling State, and parts that are left to criminal gangs, enemies of the state and other people left out of the system.

Speaking of system, the basic rules are simple and quick. They are still traditional enough to have a fixed list of skills and abilities and a combat system that’s more detailed than the rest of the game, but experimental enough to have escalation rules in social conflicts inspired by Dogs in the Vineyard and a scenario preparation method from Sorcerer.

The chapter I wrote is on story preparation, and I rewrote the introductory story to follow the method. Marco Behrmann, one of the main guys behind the game, wanted the stories to be centered around the characters and their choices, and asked me if I were interested in helping out.

Of course I was, and immediately thought of relationship maps and bangs used in Sorcerer and later games. The Swedish roleplaying forum Rollspel.nu has a similar method they call “fish tanks”, but as far as I can tell that model doesn’t include events to set things in motion.

This makes it very interesting to see what the reactions of Swedish roleplayers will be. Do people want a non-railroaded scenario design method bad enough or are they too comfortable in the old ways of preparation?

Oh, and when I talked about “traditional” and experimental above, I definitely don’t mean “traditional = bad”. I like the combat system a lot, it feels somewhat like a computer game in that you don’t have complete control of the character. You might say you want to fire suppressive fire towards someone hiding behind a crate, but how many bullets you waste and your initiative the next round is based on the result of the dice.

If everything works out with the printing house the game will be in stores late November or early December. It’s 2500 copies and will be distributed by Neogames, but if you want to catch an early copy or want the limited edition you can pre-order now.

The Noir back cover illustration.

You can find the above pictures as wallpapers for download, and excerpts from the game, at the Noir download page.