The Basics
At the end of the 2010 Game Chef Playoffs — which ran from Nov 5 to Dec 15 — the winner of Game Chef 2010 was determined to be Never to Die by James Mullen (#3), the Finalist which saw the most play by different groups of people during the playoff period.
The Finalists
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Danger Mountain! by Jason Morningstar
Danger Mountain is a short, colorful game about surviving a natural disaster in the seventies. Where there is a Mountain, there is Danger!- Resources: all the good stuff.
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Pub Crawl: Take the Edge Off by Samuel Briggson
No description yet.- Playoff Score: ✪
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Never to Die by James Mullen
A bunch of lads have a night out in the City, but a tragedy will ensure that this is their last night out ever as lads.- Playoff Score: ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
- Resources: website for actual play reports, feedback, and other support.
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Long Shot by Nick Wedig
You are a living on humanity’s first interstellar colony. You have just learned that no more supply ships are coming from Earth. How will you survive now?- Playoff Score: ✪ ✪ ✪
- Resources: actual play report that may help potential players.
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The Hand of Gulliver the Man-Mountain by Mike Pohjola
Your finger is your Lilliputian character that explores the GM’s hand, which represents the hand of Gulliver who just washed ashore. It’s the world’s first manual-digital-tactile roleplaying game. -
Chronicles of Skin by Sebastian Hickey
A pictographic story of people at war.- Playoff Score: ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
- Resources: errata notes, Cobweb Games.
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Burial at Crossroads by Bryan Hansel
A motley crew must deliver what is basically a corpse-in-box across God-forsaken post-apocalyptic cowboy country without killing each other.- Resources: Empty Game Box.
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Walkabout by Michael Wenman
The apocalypse came. Spirits ravaged the land and destroyed the cities. Heroes roam the world, cleansing spirit taint and righting wrongs.- Playoff Score: ✪ ✪
- Resources: good stuff, or on RPGnow
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In Skin City, You Need An Edge by David Wendt / Doc Blue
When society has failed you, you must rely on your edge to survive. Players fill a word grid as the narrate their struggles in Skin City. -
Cosmic Journey by Krista White
As Galactic Roadies, you must bring the Celestial Guardians back to the Cosmic Temple to save the universe. But beware the Adversaries!- Playoff Score: ✪
- Resources: a template for the Cosmic Journey Cards in .doc format for Avery 5160 or 8160 labels, also a set in .docx format
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Edge City by Tomas HV Mørkrid
You are explorers of The Edge of the world, in a capsule that is hoisted down by wire to the cliffs beneath Edge City. You pray that the wire, and your sanity, will hold…- Playoff Score: ✪
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Broken Dream by Jason A. Petrasko
No description yet. -
Sojourn: The City and The Desert by Brendan G. Conway
No description yet. -
Under the Sun by Anna Kreider
No description yet. -
Deserting Paradise by Joe Mcdaldno
You stole immortality. The Man wants it back. The City is alive and under his spell. Deserting Paradise: a post-punk voodoo escape drama.- Playoff Score: ✪ ✪ ✪
- Resources: supplemental stuff.
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Going Home: An Urban Power Fantasy by Mikael Andersson / lachek
Going Home is an urban power fantasy about mysterious characters on unknown trajectories.- Playoff Score: ✪
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Desert Journey by John Evans
Two or more players guide a lost soul to…redemption? Death? Or something else? -
Man-of-Letters, Man-of-Wars: A Game of Tactical Correspondence with a Chance of Drowning by E. Tage Larsen / Double King
Part saucy libertine epistolary novel and part age-of-sail slugfest — a gm-less game about letter writing and naval battles. Bon voyage!- Resources: development web site.
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Sparks from the Fire by Brennan Taylor
Journey to Siqaba and make your sacrifice to the Burning One. Tell your stories along the way to see what is gained and what is lost. -
Action City! by Mike Olson
A game of quip-spewing heroes, ruthless villains, and the people caught in between them. And the ’80s. And explosions. Mostly it’s about explosions.- Playoff Score: ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
- Resources: Action City! Special Features, Roll Some Dice.
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Silver and White by Jackson Tegu
Four suburban teenagers encounter the mystery that will shape their lives. They explore, and each time they touch, we exchange cards.- Resources: new revised playoff version linked above.
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Bridge Across Eternity by Tamara Persikova
A “tool-kit” game of desertion, second-guessing and making a choice between your commitments and your conscience. -
Skin Men by Marc Majcher
A biopunk adventure game in which a team of unmodified specialists escorts their hunted and scorned genetically enhanced clients to freedom.- Resources: playtest bundle, Omegaton map, Central Zone map.
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Over The Wall by Jonathan Lavallee
No description yet.
Game Chef 
November 8th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
“Man-of-Letters, Man-of-War: A Game of Tactical Correspondence with a Chance of Drowning”
by E. Tage Larsen (Double King)
Description:
Part saucy libertine epistolary novel and part age-of-sail slugfest—a gm-less game about letter writing and naval battles. Bon voyage!
Permanent link for Alpha Download of game:
Click to access ManOfLettersManOfWar.pdf
Development web site:
http://etagelarsen.com/doubleking/
November 8th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Deserting Paradise
You stole immortality. The Man wants it back. The City is alive and under his spell. Deserting Paradise: a post-punk voodoo escape drama.
The Game: http://joepub.fileave.com/desertingparadise.pdf
Supplemental Stuff: http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/deserting-paradise/
November 8th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Longshot:
“You are a living on humanity’s first interstellar colony. You have just learned that no more supply ships are coming from Earth. How will you survive now?”
(Supplemental material: Actual play report that may help a potential player identify potential problem issues.)
November 8th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Playoff question: Actual play that happened prior to November 5th still counts, correct? The rules are unclear on that.
November 9th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Never to Die: A bunch of lads have a night out in the City, but a tragedy will ensure that this is their last night out ever as lads.
Download the latest draft [url=http://www.groundhoggoth.co.uk/images/stories/games/never2die.pdf]here[/url] and visit [urlhttp://www.groundhoggoth.co.uk/]Groundhoggoth[/url] for Actual Play reports, feedback and other support for the game.
November 10th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Or those links in a sensible form:
To download the game – http://www.groundhoggoth.co.uk/images/stories/games/never2die.pdf
To visit the webiste – http://www.groundhoggoth.co.uk
November 10th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Action City! is a game of quip-spewing heroes, ruthless villains, and the people caught in between them. And the ’80s. And explosions. Mostly it’s about explosions.
Click to access ActionCity-MikeOlson.pdf
November 10th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Some massive playtesting occurred at Indiecon, with me getting people to play Never to Die every night for three consecutive nights. There are reports in greater detail on my website, but for the record:
Friday 5th November, 7-10pm, 4 players (including one who had played it at Furnace)
Saturday 6th November, 7-10pm, 4 players
Sunday 7th November, 7-10pm, 6 players (including one who had played it on Friday night)
November 10th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Burial at Crossroads
A motley crew must deliver what is basically a corpse-in-box across God-forsaken post-apocalyptic cowboy country without killing each other.
Updated Copies of the Game: Burial at Crossroads
Supplemental Stuff: Empty Game Box
November 12th, 2010 at 9:08 am
First playtest of Action City! tonight by four people who aren’t me!
Link to their report and my reply here: http://rpg-sandiego.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81832&postcount=7
November 13th, 2010 at 9:42 am
EDGE CITY
In this fun-serious game you play the citizens of a modern city on the edge of a flat world. You are the chosen ones to go beyond The Edge, in a daring scientific expedition. You will brave the void in a capsule suspended in a wire, and explore the dark cliffs beneath your home city.
And there, in the deep hollows, you find is a slightly disturbing mirror of the characters own life …
You find the PDF here:
http://www.fabula.no/EdgeCity.html
(cut and paste, please)
November 17th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Hey Tomas: Thanks for your description, but it is too long to post (more than 140 characters!). Can you cut it down for me? Thanks.
November 18th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Short description of Edge City:
You play explorers of the void outside The Edge of the world, and the cliffs beneath Edge City. Some people say you are out to find riches. Some say you are doomed. Both of them are right, and wrong …
November 18th, 2010 at 9:08 am
And shorter still (sigh):
You are explorers of The Edge of the world, in a capsule that is hoisted down by wire to the cliffs beneath Edge City. You pray that the wire, and your sanity, will hold …
November 13th, 2010 at 10:46 am
We played Edge City when it showed up here in the contest.
5 players..
November 13th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Sparks from the Fire
Journey to Siqaba and make your sacrifice to the Burning One. Tell your stories along the way to see what is gained and what is lost.
PDF:
Sparks from the Fire
November 13th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Based on some very productive discussion of my entry on RPG-SanDiego.org, I’ve put together a small collection of errata, clarifications, and other stuff for Action City! called Action City!: Special Features.
I’ll also be posting more stuff at my blog, Roll Some Dice.
November 14th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Chronicles of Skin
A Pictographic Story of People at War
Supplemental material can be found at Cobweb Games.
December 7th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
There are some clarifications to the text here, which really iron out those gruesome ambiguities.
Also, there are some playsheets (for scribbling upon) available.
November 14th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Group of 5 players played LongShot on October 27th in Saint Paul, MN.
The Pilgrim was the killer!
November 16th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Bridge Across Eternity
A “tool-kit” game of desertion, second-guessing and making a choice between your commitments and your conscience.
November 17th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Danger Mountain is a short, colorful game about surviving a natural disaster in the seventies. Where there is a Mountain, there is Danger!
I played it once so far and posted about my experiences, along with an audio recording, on Story Games.
All the good stuff is here:
http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/projects/games/game_chef/
November 17th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
My group of friends in Minneapolis played Pub Crawl last night. We had a blast, but we found that it was really hard to get the BAC for anyone’s character to go up very high. The Fudge dice evened out the pluses and minuses, so the one guy whose target was to get wasted and pass out really couldn’t do it unless you got almost all of the pluses. Also, we got a lot of minuses and blanks right at the beginning of the game, so no one really ever got drunk enough early enough in the game for there to be any really great drunk stories. I think the mechanics need to be weighted in some way to promote raising the BAC, perhaps with a set pool of pluses for each location, especially for the beginning and middle stages of the game, before everyone in theory starts to sober up.
November 17th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
WALKABOUT
The apocalypse came. Spirits ravaged the land and destroyed the cities. Heroes roam the world, cleansing spirit taint and righting wrongs.
Good stuff can be found at:
http://www.vulpinoid.com/walkabout.html
or
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=85404&filters=0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=3402
Ongoing discussions about this project will be on my blog.
November 18th, 2010 at 1:57 am
“When society has failed you, you must rely on your edge to survive. Players fill a word grid as the narrate their struggles in Skin City.”
No update to the link/file.
November 19th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Had a game of Chronicles of Skin over Skype tonight with Jason Hickey and Graham Kearney. Iho won the war, the hive-mind bastards!
November 19th, 2010 at 12:31 am
Since Jon Cole’s playtest counts (from “October 27th in Saint Paul, MN”), can I please include one of my two playtests of Chronicles of Skin from that weekend at Gaelcon?
There was a five player game on Sunday 24th October with me, Daniel Klein, Jason Hickey, Adam Kelly and Ruth Kelly.
November 19th, 2010 at 12:45 am
…which would invalidate tonight’s game, of course. So, actually, it makes no difference.
I retract my query!
November 19th, 2010 at 8:46 am
Hmm, I hadn’t noticed that the October 27th game of Long Shot had been counted as an eligible game; can I request a clarification on what games are eligible? Do games played before November 5th count or not?
November 19th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Hi Folks,
I’m just marking off the games as people are reporting them, trusting folks to follow the guidelines I’ve posted. According to those rules, games played before November don’t count because all the Finalists hadn’t been determined yet.
Please, though, can we focus on sreporting our own play sessions rather than focusing on what other folks are doing? That said, if anyone’s sessions were played before Nov 5th and need to be retracted, they should let me know themselves.
Master Chef Jonathan
November 21st, 2010 at 3:24 am
We played Longshot again tonight, and it went really well.
November 21st, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Last night, Adam played a game of Chronicles of Skin in London.
November 21st, 2010 at 6:35 pm
short description of silver and white:
Four suburban teenagers encounter the mystery that will shape their lives. They explore, and each time they touch, we exchange cards.
Updated version of the text available soon.
Thanks!
November 21st, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Never to Die was played again this weekend at Consequences, withone of the players I ran it for at Conception earlier in the month choosing to sit be the City. I wasn’t there, but apparently it had 6 players… I’ll see if I can squeeze an AP report from Julian that I can post on my website.
November 21st, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Yes, indeed, as Sebastian says I ran Chronicles of Skin for a group of five (myself included) at the London Indie RPG meetup. The Croen were wiped out by evil Iho germ warfare.
November 21st, 2010 at 10:14 pm
I just ran a slightly modified version of Walkabout on the weekend for a group of old friends who I haven’t gamed with since the 1990s. In this version, traits were exhausted in a scene when they were used, to counteract the overkill possibilities raised in the game critique…it might have just been the way I applied them, but it just didn’t work…needs more refining.
November 22nd, 2010 at 4:28 pm
We playtested Deserting Paradise last week!
Jenna Bush was one of our PCs; Tyler Lautner and Ashley Tisdale guest starred. It was… odd. Never play moody punk games set in Los Angeles.
November 24th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Short description of The Hand of Gulliver the Man-Mountain:
Your finger is your Lilliputian character that explores the GM’s hand, which represents the hand of Gulliver who just washed ashore. It’s the world’s first manual-digital-tactile roleplaying game.
November 24th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Grace and Ross and I played Deserting Paradise yesterday.
Samson got some weird oil from the witch doctor, and Dakota managed to save his boss from asphyxiation in the bathroom, dragged him out to the street for air and then told him where he could stick that shitty job.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Five friends and I played Action City! at game night last night.
It was a glorious mess somewhat resembling Die Hard, with Sin City-esque action strippers, a corrupt police commissioner, and a triple-cross amid a hail of deadly gunfire.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:51 am
Better-late-than-never Playoffs edition of Silver and white.
Click to access silver-and-white-gc-playoffs-jackson-tegu.pdf
Hugely re-worded, Explain cards are much clearer, four pages of techniques for best play, three pages of reference, etc.
thank you!
November 28th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Mauro and others played a game of Chronicles of Skin over in Italy.
Here is their play report and here is their skin (really nice image).
November 28th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Ran a game of Never to Die today at the Portsmouth ‘Pompey Crew’ club. Players – all new to the game – were Jeannette, Toad, Rich and Lisa. AP report going on UK Roleplayers within the next 24 hours.
November 28th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Everything should be up to date now, as we near the end of Nov and the final two weeks in Dec. I’m very impressed with all the play that these games have seen. Definitely an improvement over past Game Chef competitions as far as actually getting games to the table. Seems like you folks may have ensured that this experiment works and deserves to stick around in some form as a new tradition.
November 29th, 2010 at 3:47 am
Had fun playing Action City!
Tried and failed to stop the bad guy from enacting a statistical tracking of all citizens, preempting crime.
Playtesters:
Brian Allred – Opposition
Alice Baran – Traitorous Friend
Chris Ellsworth – Friend
Desmond Wooten – Hero
November 29th, 2010 at 4:48 am
Another playtest of Longshot happened tonight. I didn’t get to play, but I did catch the ending when the Deserter bashed the Zealot’s head in with the alien artifact.
November 29th, 2010 at 5:42 am
Action City! had another playtest today by a group in Torrance, CA. I wasn’t there, but it sounds like fun was had, despite some speedbumps.
December 4th, 2010 at 9:40 am
We just played Action City tonight. Synopsis: a few rough edges and coule use more explanatory text, but very good.
AP with notes.
December 4th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Here are some errata notes (clarifications and whatnot) for Chronicles of Skin.
Jonathan, could you please add this link to the first Chronicles of Skin post—if you think it’s appropriate?
December 5th, 2010 at 12:20 am
Played Deserting Paradise on December 2.
December 5th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Action City! had another playtest today — this time by Hamish Cameron et al. in Los Angeles. An account of their session, along with some feedback, can be found here.
December 6th, 2010 at 12:36 am
We played a game of Chronicles of Skin at ArCONate in Arconate, Milan area, Italy.
December 6th, 2010 at 12:37 am
Oops, I forgot: it happened on December 4th, and for the three of us it was the first time trying out that game.
December 6th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
I don’t know if this is too late (it’s certainly not enough to put me into a winning position for the contest…or even in the top three places for play sessions.)
I managed to run another session of Walkabout at a local game store that was interested in the idea of running a playtest session (I’ll probably be using them again in the future to refine the game over the next few months).
Things ran reasonably smoothly, I ran it in a far more structured way than the first session. Pre-gen characters, but allowing players to determine relationship dynamics before the session began.
I also don’t know if it counts for anything, but I was really pleased to see a GM wanting to run walkabout over on “rpol.net”, I only detected this because I traced back web traffic from my website.
December 7th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Three friends and I played Deserting Paradise last night in place of our usual campaign (we were a player down). It played out as an Akira-inspired game of action punk rebellion. The action part didn’t work so well (our GM’s ideas were colored a bit too heavily by last week’s Action City! one-shot), but it was still a good experiment.
December 7th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
We played COSMIC JOURNEY the other day, Singles Version. Some of the players did not latch onto the “song lyrics defining plot changes” concept as quickly as others, but everyone had a great time. The lyrics we got were so odd that whole experience couldn’t help but be hilarious.
While it’s not a game for everyone, it does manage to be a game where everyone can have fun playing it, due to the quickness of play and the careful absurdity of the system.
December 7th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
It’s probably too late to influence my standings in the Playoffs. But nonetheless, I wrote an expansion module for Longshot, that takes the same game and sends the action into the historical past instead of the scifi future. It’s 1589, and your colony on Roanoke Island is falling apart with no contact or support from the homeland. How will you survive a harsh wilderness?
Two links, because some people had trouble with Scribd. Hopefully one will work:
Click to access roanoake.pdf
December 7th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
We had a Very Special game of Never to Die at the MKRPG tonight: it was the Night Out Before Xmas, with 4 of Santa’s elves creating mayhem on Oxford Street as they attempted some last minute xmas shopping to get something nice for Mrs. Claus. They started a riot outside Selfridges (involving a nude foam party in the street) then used the distraction to help themselves to some goodies in the store, being only partially distracted by Santa’s Grotto: Itchy went for a ride on the model train set, Bongo got into a death match with Tiny Tim and ended up as sushi, Nutso set fire to the grotto and Happy got off with a couple of shop assistants whose elf outfits were burned to tatters. It all ended in Harrods, with the Queen breaking Bongo’s fingers and being forced to abdicate by the British tabloids.
December 12th, 2010 at 4:37 am
We just played Going Home. It was entertaining but revealed a lot of opportunity for improvement; specifically, some tweaks to scene framing, clarifications of narrative responsibilities, and updated directive sheets (plus one for the traveller) would be useful.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to the end so didn’t get to test out the Confrontation resolution mechanics, which is my biggest concern.
Updated description of the game: “Going Home is an urban power fantasy about mysterious characters on unknown trajectories.”
Hyperlink to an updated version of their game (same link): http://www.hammergames.org/uploads/lachek/goinghome.pdf
Hyperlink to any additional supplemental advice or materials that you have already posted or will post during the playoffs: none.
December 16th, 2010 at 5:40 am
One last playtest for Action City!, this time by Larry Harala et al. out in Utah. I have no details — only that the playtest was done “and the group liked it.”
December 16th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Played Never To Die, last night (December 15th) , I have played before but the other 3 players were new. I played as the city. It was actually a pretty down to earth game, but probably due to having a couple of slightly shy players. But everyone enjoyed it, I don’t think I brought as much awesome to the game as the city as James did in the games he ran for me.