The Precurse of Fierce Events
Here’s how it’s gonna roll this year, in summary. Full details follow below.
- Theme: William Shakespeare.
- Ingredients: [Daughter, Exile, Forsworn, Nature]. Pick 3 of these 4.
- Maximum Length: 3,000 words, plus supplemental play materials.
- Discussions: Talk wherever you want, but there will be a temporary discussion forum on the Forge just for Game Chef.
- Submission: Link to your game in the submission thread (which will be posted shortly) by the time I wake up on July 25th.
- Initial Reviewing: New this year! Participants will be randomly assigned 3 or 4 games to read (depending on how many get submitted), and will recommend 1 game to go on to the second round.
- Winners: The games with the most recommendations (3 or 4) will get closely reviewed by me and my father, a Shakespeare professor, to determine the overall winner. Participants will also be invited to vote for the best game with a smaller number of recommendations (the Groundlings’ Award) and the secret advisory cabal of former Game Chef participants may award additional prizes.
But How, But How? Give Me Particulars!
The Basics
Design and submit a playable draft of a roleplaying game between July 15th-25th, inspired by the theme and ingredients listed below.
2011 Theme: Avon Calling
The theme of Game Chef 2011 is William Shakespeare. As always, you are free to interpret the theme however you like, but remember that this is the theme and not just an ingredient. Your game should be “Shakespearean” in some regard, though how exactly is up to you.
This year’s theme is inspired by many things, but one of them is the failure of a Shakespeare-inspired virtual world called Arden, due to the game not being any fun and the design team not being able to figure out how to make a Shakespeare game compelling, despite $250,000 in MacArthur Foundation funding.
Our guest judge this year will be my dad, Dr. Garry Walton, who teaches Shakespeare at Meredith College (the largest women’s college in the Southeast) and will offer feedback on the Shakespearean components of games that make it past the initial round of reviewing. Here’s his bio from the school website:
- Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of English. A.B., A.M., Ph.D. University of Virginia. Dr. Walton has served as head of the department and director of the college Honors program. He has published essays on Shakespeare, performance, and pedagogy and teaches courses on Shakespeare and other British authors.
My dad is interested in all sorts of interpretations of Shakespeare, including things as diverse as The Lion King, Kurosawa’s Ran, Shakespeare in Love, Ten Things I Hate About You, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and The African Company Presents Richard III, so you shouldn’t be worried that your game is too outlandish.
2011 Ingredients
In addition to the overall theme, pick 3 of these 4 ingredients to design your game around.
daughter
exile
forsworn
nature
Try to incorporate the ingredients as centrally as you can, as part of the premise or the rules or however else makes sense to you. A passing reference is okay if that’s all you can come up with, but really drawing strongly on the ingredients is suggested.
For example, the 2004 ingredients were [ice, island, dawn, assault], which ended up inspiring games like The Mountain Witch (climbing icy Mount Fuji to assault the witch’s fortress), The Dance and the Dawn (try to find your true love at an island social gathering, hoping that — when dawn breaks — you don’t end up with the one that has a heart of ice), and Polaris (arctic elves struggle against themselves and a demonic assault, with the dawn finally coming for the first time in hundreds of years).
This year, my father and I picked words from The Complete Works of Shakespeare to be our ingredients, so they should be challenging without being totally alien to the theme.
Brevity is the Soul of Wit
The main text of your game should be 3,000 words or less, but you may also include additional materials in the form of maps, diagrams, play sheets, etc. This is so you can spend any additional time revising and polishing rather than turning out additional, half-baked material. We’re not going to conduct a word count on your game and disqualify you but, please, this is for the good of your game as well as the sanity of your reviewers, who have jobs, lives, families, etc.
Rule on Previous Work
You may draw on concepts you have thought about or worked on before the contest, but everything you submit must be new work, not previous material.
Rule on Intellectual Property
It is ultimately the designer’s responsibility to deal with all rights-related issues. Including excerpts from public domain or open source content — for example, Shakespeare’s works — is fine. Drawing inspiration from other games is also fine, but be sure to give credit and put it in your own words.
Design Discussions
There will a dedicated forum set up for discussing Game Chef 2011 at the Forge (our previous home from 2002-2004 and the most popular place for discussions in 2010). Other options include Praxis, the RPGnet design forums, your own blog (if you have one), or whatever else you can think of.
I highly recommend sticking to a single thread per individual game rather than filling a forum with multiple threads about the same game concept. That makes it easier for everyone else to parse the forums and for the people interested in your game to find your most recent posts. Other threads for general discussion, open questions, and joshing each other are, of course, totally cool.
Game Submission
Games are due by the time I wake up on the morning of July 25th and are submitted by posting a link to them in the 2011 Game Submission thread (which will be posted once the contest starts). Games should be submitted in PDF format or an audio or video format (mp3, mp4, mov) that reviewers can open without purchasing proprietary software. There are lots of ways to find a free place to host files these days, but I recommend 1KM1KT, a long-time partner of Game Chef, if you are looking for options.
Initial Reviewing
Once games are submitted, each chef will be randomly assigned 3 or 4 games to review. You will have until Saturday, July 30th to pick 1 of the 4 to recommend for the next round. Chefs who submit their games early will be assigned games to review as soon as possible, which may be a good option for folks heading off to GenCon.
Chefs who do not submit their recommendations will be disqualified from participating in the finals and we will find new reviewers to replace them, likely from past participants or those who attempted a game in 2011 but did not finish or choose not to submit it.
While reviewers are not required to explain their decisions to anyone (and should not be called on to defend their choices), it is good sportsmanship for reviewers to either publicly post a few thoughts on each game (what you liked, what you think could be improved) or send them privately to the games’ authors, so they can benefit and you can build contacts or relationships with other chefs.
Suggestions and advice on how to handle reviewing will come in the submission and review threads.
Picking Winners
The games that receive the most nominations will be considered by Dr. Walton and myself in the final round, with my dad commenting on the Shakespearean aspects and me (Jonathan) on the game design aspects. Together, we will name one or two winners for this year’s contest. Additional awards will be determined by popular vote from the remaining games and special selection by the shadowy cabal serving as an informal advisory group.
Winning Game Chef is Like Winning the Nobel Prize
It’s great! But many folks who’ve won the Nobel Prize in Literature have books that are out of print. Indeed, nearly all past Game Chef-winning games — for one reason or another — have not gone on to fame and fortune, though their designers have done other neat stuff. Ultimately, whatever you do with your game after Game Chef is up to you. But winning is a strong sign that folks in the community enjoy your work and are ready to support you.
A Few Final Thoughts
Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your own experience of Game Chef. I have tried to create a good environment, based on my own previous experiences and the hard work of the Master Chefs before me, but that only goes so far, especially since the contest has gotten too big for any one person to manage. So take the initiative, ask others for what you need (including me, but also your fellow chefs), create what you don’t have, participate in discussions as much as you like, walk away from discussions when they are distracting you from designing, and do what you need to do. This is your Game Chef, make it what you want it to be.
Comments
The comments below are for questions about the rules, which I will be very happy to answer. If you want to share your excitement about the contest, please do it on your favorite forum, blog, Twitter, etc.
July 13th, 2011 at 8:02 am
I can’t help but notice that Strange Brew is conspicuously absent from that list of Shakespeare interpretations. What is your beef with Canada, sir?
Anyway — this sounds cool and I look forward to it, even though Comic-Con will make finishing in time a challenge.
July 14th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
IS it just me, but are the 4 ingredients XXXXX? Typo, or invitation to untrammeled creativity?
July 14th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Eleri: The ingredients will be announced on Friday, when the contest actually starts. They haven’t been posted yet to prevent folks from getting too much of an early jump on things.
July 14th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Approximately what time Friday? (Midnight tonight, tomorrow morning, afternoon, or evening?)
July 14th, 2011 at 10:40 pm
It’s typically Friday evening, once people get off work/school, but chefs in Europe have specifically requested early Friday afternoon instead, due to time differences.
July 14th, 2011 at 9:31 pm
I’ll be participating this year… can’t wait! (I also can’t guarantee I won’t make it an SF game, but ‘Forbidden Planet’ was based on The Tempest, so, here’s to the Bard!)
July 15th, 2011 at 7:34 am
It’s after 5.30pm here in Australia, and no ingredients…that’s the first day wasted for me.
July 15th, 2011 at 11:48 am
I assume that mr. Walton has taken timezone differences into account. Basically, if you “lose” your first day due to time difference, you gain it back in the end.
I also assume he is running the contest in UTC -5 timezone or something like that. I’d prefer if there was a clear deadline for us who don’t live in the US. Something like “approximately 15.00 UTC +0” so that we know when the contest is due.
That said, I don’t think that timezones are really an issue here. At least it hasn’t been in all the previous contests that I’ve attended.
July 15th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
You’re right, I usually do get an extra day at the end…I just thought I’d complain for the sake of complaining, but it’s now 10:02pm on Friday the 15th for me and still no ingredients.
July 15th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
My dad’s approving the final list of ingredients right now. Should be up shortly.
July 15th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
Posted!
July 15th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
[…] The king of game writing contests, Game Chef, is about to begin this year. The whole “write a completely playable game in a couple of weeks”-concept has always been very interesting and challenging. The rules of the competition can be found in here: https://gamechef.wordpress.com/2011-contest-rules/. […]
July 15th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
I am new to Game Chef, but this sounds like a complete blast. How does using the ingredients work? I see there will be a list, but I do not understand how we are supposed to use them.
July 15th, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Good question, Matt! I’ll add some explanatory text when I post the ingredients, but basically you pick 3 of the 4 ingredients and try to incorporate them as centrally as you can, as part of the premise or the mechanics or however else makes sense to you. A passing reference is okay if that’s all you can come up with, but really drawing strongly on the ingredients is suggested.
For example, the 2004 ingredients were [ice, island, dawn, assault], which ended up inspiring games like The Mountain Witch (climbing icy Mount Fuji to assault the witch’s fortress), The Dance and the Dawn (trying to find your true love at an island social gathering before dawn breaks, hoping you don’t end up with the one that has a heart of ice), and Polaris (arctic elves struggle against themselves and a demonic assault, with the dawn finally coming for the first time in hundreds of years).
This year, my father and I picked words from The Complete Works of Shakespeare to be our ingredients, so they should be challenging without being totally alien to the theme.
July 15th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Thanks for the quick reply! I love having constraining/directing elements on my work – it funnels my creativity into one direction. I look forward to entering this year’s challenge.
July 15th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
For those looking to prospect Shakespeare’s works for those ingredients, what you’re looking for is a searchable concordance (which is an index of the occurrence of words). Here’s what you need: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/
July 15th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Great suggestion, Paul! My dad actually picked a couple of the ingredients (including Nature, I think) out of a concordance. Maybe that very one!
July 15th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
I had totally decided that I wasn’t going to participate in this, because I didn’t want to do anything so major and I’m a slacker punk. Then one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever had (note: doesn’t mean good, just good for me) struck my head like a meteor and now I have to participate. So I will!
…I have nothing else to say, I just wanted to say thanks for putting this up, and also a version of “oh boy, here we go again”.
July 15th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Hm, not very familiar with shakespearean themes, but I’ll probably give this a try. A check of an earlier work puts 3,000 words at about 6 pages, does that sound about right for what you want? That’s 6 pages of text, pictures would of course lengthen that. Approximately, of course. I just want to make sure I’m thinking in the right ballpark in terms of size. Most of mine tend to go a lot longer. :)
Gryffudd/Pat G
July 15th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Yup. 3,000 words.
July 15th, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Great ingredients, Jonathan! Thanks for putting this together. Any problems with a team of designers submitting a single entry?
July 15th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Collaboration is totally fine! Just submit your entry under multiple names and remember that you don’t get 2x wordcount for having 2x the designers. I’ll also treat you as a single entry for the purposes of reviewing games, unless we need someone to jump in for an absentee reviewer.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:59 am
[…] you think you can create a tabletop RPG game in a week? Check out the Game Chef’s 2011 Annual Tabletop Design Contest. If you can create a playable draft of a RPG between July 15th & 25th, Godspeed my […]
July 16th, 2011 at 3:30 am
[…] I was directed to this contest. The basic idea is to design a roleplaying game with “Shakespeare” as a theme and using […]
July 16th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
[…] [Reglene for årets Game Chef] er ute, denne gang med en Shakespearsk tone; vi for vår del gleder oss til å teste spill som krever at vi lærer å snakke i iambisk pentameter. […]
July 17th, 2011 at 7:54 am
Heh, already wrote a Shakespeare game awhile back. If you and your Dad want to see it, happy to send it along with a clear label that it’s not an entry when I post an idea that IS an entry.
Speaking of last year…http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/fall-of-granada/15835235
July 17th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Nice, Travis! That makes you the first person to commercially publish a game from 2010, I think, though probably not the last one. I’m working on an archive page that highlights previous entries, so I’ll link to it.
July 18th, 2011 at 7:11 am
Where is the Game Submission Thread?
July 18th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
I’ll post it later today! You’re done already? :)
July 19th, 2011 at 9:58 am
No, not yet. Just making sure that everything is in place for when I am. I expect to use every last second of the time allowed, would be a shame if I missed the deadline because I couldn’t find the submission thread when the time came. :-)
July 21st, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Did the submissions thread get posted yet?
July 22nd, 2011 at 4:37 am
Hi there — my game’s ready! Woo hoo!
I am not seeing the submission thread, though, but it may be that don’t know where to look. Where is it, please?
Thanks for your help. Toph
July 22nd, 2011 at 2:58 pm
The submissions thread is finally posted up top. Sorry for the delay!
July 19th, 2011 at 5:02 am
[…] Game Chef annual table top design contest is up and […]
July 19th, 2011 at 5:53 am
Rules question! Are we allowed to use all four of the ingredients?
July 19th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Yes, you can always use more ingredients than you need.
July 19th, 2011 at 6:33 am
[…] at Google+, I’m developing a little game called You and Me for Game Chef 2011. If you’re unfamiliar with Game Chef, it gives you a short burst of time (until July 25) to […]
July 19th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Thanks for the post Jonathan!
I second Anarchangel’s question. :D
Also, for you and your dad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhVYgNdPJmc MC Lars, Hey There Ophelia
July 20th, 2011 at 3:10 am
[…] spent a good chunk of the weekend brainstorming my Game Chef […]
July 24th, 2011 at 8:08 am
[…] participating in Game Chef again this year. You couldn’t keep me away after how much fun I had with it last year. This […]
July 25th, 2011 at 5:11 am
Hey Jonathan, know you are SUPER BUSY tonight etc. Would you/your dad be interested in looking at the other game I wrote awhile back? It’s called Blank Verse, intended to be used to get people to practice Blank Verse and play at being Actors.
If I ever release it will likely: A) Be Free. B) Be more promoted in educational circles than gaming, so it may be of more interest to your father than you. Respond when/if you get a chance.
No response will not be taken as anything other than you are too busy, and I might bug you after this is done, if I remember. ;)
July 28th, 2011 at 4:04 pm
[…] that is appealing enough on the surface, but add that this year’s theme is Shakespeare, and I found it irresistible. But, as you might expect, I do not have the time to devote to a Game […]
June 11th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
[…] go right away was the ingredient that wasn’t really pulling its weight: Exile. The contest had required us to use two out of three of the words Nature, Oath, Exile and Daughter. Natures and Oaths became […]