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.

Both Anders and Peter have written play reports on the One Can Have Her game at OmniCon. Anders’s report One Can Have Her på OmniCon is on Rollspel.nu and Peter’s thread is on the Forge. Thanks guys!

You can now get my Noir GothCon story Dold kärlek (”Hidden love”, in Swedish). Don’t forget the quick rules (also in Swedish) if you want to play the story without flipping through the main rule book.

The story was well received at the convention. We had almost 150 players divided between three sessions.

Some comments published on the web by players and storytellers (in Swedish, because I’m lazy):

• papylon: “Det är inte ofta spelare i ett scenario vilt bankar på väggar och bord för att illustrera specialeffekter och dyl, det lyckades Dold kärlek framkalla och dessutom på ett grymt sätt foga in homosexuella aspekter i en genre som hittils varit befriead från seriösa försök att tackla denna fråga.”
• orn72: “Som SL/berättare tyckte jag det var en höjdare, jag ledde två pass och fick känna på två mycket inlevelsefulla lag. Som tidigare nämts så var det intressant att homosexualitet kom med i berättelsen på ett naturligt sätt, och det tog sig båda lagen an utan att förfalla till parodi.”
• Gorger: “Jag gillade skarpt optningsforge:andet, som skapade flera riktigt otippade och intressanta situationer.”

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.

Now there’s an actual play thread on the Forge from my Sorcerer game. It’s long, even though I avoided a lot of stuff I could’ve talked about. The GM rewards are summarized at the very end of the post, and I guess sprinkled through it.