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In Heroes Die, the players create an Actor, and lead him through one of his productions. Actors are usually solo efforts – they get their own titles. Sometimes there are “cross-over” productions, where Actors work together, but these are rare. The danger in being targeted as an Aktiri is greater when you’re amongst your own kind, and while death gets great ratings, long-lived Actors with extensive track records and histories bring in more money over the long run. Each production is a calculated risk.

Background

There are worlds apart from our own, where the laws of physics play out a different tune. Many of them cannot be visited – the way things work are simply too bizarre. But some can be visited, and in these places, sometimes things are different enough that what you could do, you can only call magic. One of these places even has mankind – a place called Overworld, it looks like heroic fantasy brought to life. The industrial revolution hasn’t reached Overworld; there is no overpopulation, little pollution, vast tracts of wilderness populated with strange and wonderful beasts. “Magic” in countless variation exists on every level, the worshipped gods are still active, and there is even nonhuman sapience distressingly similar to ‘elves’. It is truly a swords and sorcery place, perhaps the inspiration somehow for the earliest fantasy stories.

In the future, we have found Overworld (and gave it the name), and we know how to get there. Unfortunately, it cannot be colonized – if people stays too long, they finds themselves being pulled back ‘home’ to their original dimension, passing through hundreds of uninhabitable ones along the way. It is an unpleasant, painful experience nobody has survived. So what do we do with this place? Why do we care?

The Studio has an answer – entertainment. Bloody entertainment. “Actors” trained like secret agents in the languages and cultures of Overworld, are thrown across the dimensional void and given tasks called Adventures, Adventures which in turn are broadcast back through special cybernetic brain implants – all five senses recorded for the consumers to experience later, or for the right price, immediately. Actors are drilled in using weapons and magic – swords and sorcery.

The viewers get to feel the visceral thrill of adventuring – of having sorcery flow through their veins, of slicing someone with cold steel, perhaps even of dying. The producers get huge profits, sculpt huge storylines, and keep their position at the top. Actors get paid very well, and get the lion’s share of the fame, but in return risk their lives constantly – many Actors don’t get past their first few productions, dying unceremoniously in some foolhardy producer stunt or another.

As for the people of Overworld? Well, their lives are made more interesting, but not always in a good way. Stable governments and peace don’t make for good ratings – Actors, following producer orders, have done more to keep the political situation of Overworld chaotic than its natives ever have. Furthermore, in the early days, before they learned better, Actors were sloppy – now, the people of Overworld tell tales of the mysterious Aktiri, and keep an eye out for their activities. Not a few natives have fallen in Aktiri pogroms, much more than actual Actors. Either way, it’s great for ratings.

In One More Hour, you play a hero, a member of a team of elite masters of their fields. Nothing is beyond your grasp, if only you have the time. But now that has all changed, death isn’t something you can escape. In no uncertain terms the team has only one hour left to live. And in that time they must decide whether to die as heroes or as real people. It is also the third main course in the Full Course of Love and Death.

One More Hour is the fourth RPG in the Full Course of Love and Death, coming between the second main course of The Marriage of Persephone and the last, That Oh So Little Death. You play the same team as you did in The Marriage of Persephone, except due to the favor you received in that game, you have been given a chance to come back and right the wrongs of your untimely death. Unfortunately, your strand has already been cut, so you have only an hour to make that difference. After One More Hour, That Oh So Little Death acts as a ending for the entire full course, but will likely involve at least one hero from the team. Like all games in this Full Course, One More Hour is intended for five players.

As a game designed for Iron Game Chef 26, it is necessary to discuss the allotments made for that contest. Indeed, for the theme of time, One More Hour fulfills 8 hours requirement, spread among any number of sessions. And it uses the following contest terms: Glass, Law, Steel, and Team.

and the Celestial Committee of the Eternal Circle of Suffering

The Celestial Committee of the Eternal Circle of Suffering exists outside of time and space, sitting in judgment on the souls of those who die. The soul of Dr. Livingstone now stands before them, and his many lives, reincarnated throughout history, pass under review. In this game you will play a member of the committee, and determine the ultimate fate of Dr. Livingstone’s soul.

On the morning of April 3, 1872, golden with the glory of the tropical dawn, Dr. David Livingstone leaves this world of suffering. Kneeling at his bedside his head falls to his chest, his glasses slipping gently from his hand onto the floor of the tent as with his last breath his ancient soul departs at long last from his tortured body.

The jungle around him fades slowly, blurring into a jungle of tall skyscrapers, pinpoints of light pouring through glass looming up into the sky. The pinpoints of light become the stars behind an unfathomably massive, looming, shape, larger than a moon, spinning and lurching rebelliously through the void of space. The great wheel rotates beyond the heavens, blurring once more as the wheel of a chariot appears, skittering over the bodies of the fallen, blood spraying into the air. Grief, anger, and above all an overwhelming fear drive its riders into acts of great heroism, an arm thrusting a great spear. Hurtling through the air the world spins and blurs again, and a stone tip strikes into a great bison as a young hunter shouts with the thrill of the hunt. The shout echoes through the night until it comes from a dark alley, a young woman screams out what may be her last breath at the mercy of her jealous rival.

Dr. Livingstone reaches down, picks up his glasses, and puts them back on.

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The familiar voice causes his consciousness to focus suddenly on another place, a place outside of time. He sees the face of Henry Stanley.

“Yes.” Dr. Livingstone reaches up to tip his hat, only to find that he is not wearing one.

The face blurs. Other faces appear around it, blurring and twisting, each new shape sending a wash of conflicting emotion over him. They sit facing him from up above behind a long and austere row of raised desks, furiously scribbling down notes as they begin the interrogation.

One of them speaks again. “Dr. Livingstone, we wish to discuss the events of January 19th, 200284. It is your third day as governor of the British colony on Mars, the life support system for the biosphere is running at 3% capacity and steadily dropping, and you are presented with a most unfortunate dilemma. Do you recall this day? Please describe to the committee what you do on this day.”

Dr. Livingstone remembers. He wishes that he did not.

Escape from Prince Charming is based on the traditional fairy tale. The players take on the roles of fair princesses, seeking to escape their fate and risking their lives and the lives of others to escape it. But like the fairy tale, the endings have already been written, it’s only a matter of finding which one you get. It is also the appetizer in the Full Course of Love and Death.

This RPG is the first in the Full Course of Love and Death. As an appetizer it prepares the players for the main courses to come. As such it need not be played with any special constraints for enjoyment of the full course. Instead just pick characters and begin playing. When you are done, any character, human or otherwise who died can be played in Someone to Love, the first of the main courses. Like all games in this Full Course, Escape from Prince Charming is intended for five players.

As a game designed for Iron Game Chef 26, it is necessary to discuss the allotments made for that contest. Indeed, for the theme of time, Escape from Prince Charming fulfills the three sessions of 3 hours each requirement. And it uses the following contest terms: Glass, Committee, and Ancient.

The Capital of the Eternal Century is a game of urban psychogeography. It celebrates the city as a puzzle of emotional zones. Themes drawn from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project provide the pieces. Think of it as a barely-recognizable 19th Century Paris experienced by a fl?neur (stroller) voraciously absorbing the dense details of streets life and urban transformations while walking through the metropolis.

Capital of the Eternal Century is a game of urban psychogeography. It celebrates the city as a puzzle of emotional zones. Themes drawn from Walter Benjamin?s Arcades Project provide the pieces.

Think of it as a barely-recognizable 19th Century Paris experienced by a fl ?neur (stroller) voraciously absorbing the dense details of streets life and urban transformations while walking through the metropolis.

The game follows a single character out on a long, meandering stroll: ten hours from a day in their life. You will play the game as ten one-hour sessions. The fi rst session fi nds the character eating a meal in preparation for the long walk in front of them. During this fi rst hour you will begin to build the character by establishing some of his or her emotional and intellectual facilities. You will fi ll in part of a phrenological map of the character?s mind and personality, leaving blank spaces that will inscribed over the course of the remaining sessions.

You have the choice of whether the initiating meal is breakfast, lunch or supper, which determines what hours of the day the character will be out strolling. Since the mood of a city changes throughout the day, the time you set will shift the emotional resonance of the nine city districts the character experiences.

Sessions two through ten each take place in a different zone of the city. These zones are physical settings with varying mixes of inhabitants, architecture, street activity and businesses. More importantly, every zone is infused with its own unique mood, which will influence the game as much as much as the city?s physical layout.

The fl ?neur character spends exactly one hour walking though each zone. He or she may pause, step inside a shopping arcade, chat with a friend, be drawn intoa temporary escapade, but by the end of the hour the character will have moved on the next district.

Players open each of the strolling sessions with approximately fi ve or ten minutes of description to establish the setting and color of the zone their character is passing through. For the remainder of the hour, players introduce confl icts linked to the zone?s mood and to themes of 19th century urban modernity. Confl icts in the game unfold in three varieties. The fl ?neur can be confronted directly? perhaps by a petty criminal, gendarme, scam artist, lost child, street preacher or the like ? choose to intervene in a tense situation, or create the tension by intervening. The character can also observe confl ict as an emotional voyeur by fi xing on the disputes and passions of people encountered along the way. Finally, confl ict can play out internally among competing mental drives as the character reacts to the cityscape and the issues inscribed in its boulevards.

The outcomes of these conflicts add new details to the character?s mental topography. Over the course of play, the phrenological map that defi nes the character blends with the other ?map layers? of the game. Movements tracked along city streets. Psychogeography?s validation of the emotional resonance of place. Benjamin?s schema of cultural trends and material artifacts that made Paris the capital of the 19th century.

Capital of the Eternal Century was written for the 26 Game Chef competition. It incorporates the time limitation of ten one-hour sessions, with character creation taking place during the initial session and each remaining session exploring a different city zone. The game also uses three ingredients: glass, ancient, and emotion. Glass gives the game the glass roofs of the arcades that signify the rise of modern consumer culture. Ancient provides the buried city of the river, the sewers, and the metropolises deep history. Emotion inspired the psychogeographic division of the city into emotional zones and the emotion-description based conflict resolution system.

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That Oh So Little Death is a RPG about sex. But many things in art and fiction are metaphor for sex, and sex itself is a metaphor for many things. This is a game that explores those boundaries. It is also dessert in the Full Course of Love and Death.

This game is the last in a Full Course of Love and Death, a quintology of RPGs. It is the dessert, and has been design to add a delightful twist to the chronicles of Love and Death through which the players have already ventured. What the other games have danced around, That Oh So Little Death embraces. When played as the dessert, each player should choose a character from a previous RPG in the course, and should remake them for this game. In many cases, the archetypes below will make that an easy matter. As playing That Oh So Little Death in this way, consider how the events of the previous game could have been simply a metaphor for the activities in this one. Like all games in this Full Course, That Oh So Little Death is intended for five players, ideally the same five who started this journey with Escape from Prince Charming.

As a game designed for Iron Game Chef 26, it is necessary to discuss the allotments made for that contest. Indeed, for the theme of time, That Oh So Little Death fulfills the single session of 2 hours requirement. And it uses all of the contest terms: Glass, Committee, Ancient, Emotion, Law, Actor, Steel, and Team.

The players take the roles of the Magisters, supremely old and powerful wizards that control the mystic city of Magicant. The leadership of the city is empty, and the Magisters must choose one of their own to rule. The Magisters are the mystic equals of one another, and their conflicts can only be resolved by a vote of the group as a whole. Council of the Magisters is a game for exactly five players, for exactly four sessions of exactly two hours each.

Each player takes the role of one of the Magisters, empowered with that Magister’s sphere of influence. The Council of the Magisters meets both in-game and out-of-game for four sessions, each two hours long. The purpose of these meetings is to choose one of their own to be the Supreme Magister. Each session, one of the players will become ineligible for the position of Supreme Magister; but they still attend the sessions, and vote just like anyone still in the running! (Note: the terms “Player” and “Magister” are used fairly interchangeably in the text. Council of Magisters assumes that the players will be using Actor stance, and being fairly immersed in their roles. In addition, several rules refer to the ages of the Magisters. Magisters should be considered to have the same relative ages as their players.)

In Council of the Magisters, Game Time and Real Time takes exactly the same amount. If it takes the Players of the Magisters an hour to resolve a conflict, that’s how long it took the Magisters themselves. For the most part, the players of the Magisters should sit around and talk in-character, acting as the Magisters themselves, engaged in a tense debate for leadership. (This is known as “General Debate,” as opposed to “Vote Debate.”)

Inspired by the Hermann Hesse novel of the same name, “The Glass Bead Game” challenges players to find connections between the emotions they bring to the table, building a structure for the stories they will tell. Players create characters that express the themes found at the intersections of these emotions, and play out scenes where their control is limited only by the will of the other players and the constraints they themselves created. The stories they tell will culminate in a narrative that resides in the unmapped space between them.

Author?s Notes

Special thanks to Andy Kitkowski for running Game-Chef and this year?s great theme and ingredients, to the other competitors for their fascinating ideas (both as part of their own work and while commenting on each other?s) on the 1km1kt forums, and to Mike O?Sullivan for letting me know about the competition in the first place.

My muse didn?t get working on my Game-Chef entry until Saturday morning. I stared at the ingredients Friday night and very loudly complained that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. Sometime between then and the following morning, however, something must have clicked. Most likely it was seeing my new copy of Hesse?s novel sitting snugly on my bookcase.

Ingredients-wise, my entry is a storytelling-by-committee game based on connecting emotions via a system which is an attempt to emulate the one vaguely described in Hesse?s ?The Glass Bead Game.? The inital board is built purely by vote and negotiation, with later conflicts being handled by a combination of arbitration, point spending and chance. The concept of bounding the game in time, with the players literally working against the clock from movement to movement, prevents gameplay from becoming bogged down in the details. While building the maps which guide the story (and even acting out scenes), the ticking clock should remind players that they need to keep things moving.

The central intention of this work was to build a system for telling stories that guides and rewards players for using concepts and ideas that are half-way between their own and the other players?. It paradoxically gives more control to players who do not force their original vision onto the work, in the form of points. The original emotions the players put into the game are only ever worth a single point, and can only ever produce one further point during the course of the first session.

Concepts which link one more or player?s ideas, on the other hand, are worth far more, with the Trigger Node, the concept linking as many of the given themes as possible, becoming the basis for the story told. During conflicts the more a player?s desired resolution attempts to include the ideas of other players the more likely it is to succeed.

Meanwhile, the design attempts to evolve the structure of the stories told by using the ideas and concepts which were most popular with the players as the basis for future stories.

All of this hopefully adds up to a game which encompasses Hesse?s ideas on music, science, art and connection. Play involves a rigidly structure system which still allows a great deal of freedom and creativity.

In ?The Glass Bead Game?, Hesse notes that novices often begin their training by looking for connections between two seemingly incongruous works; for example, a piece of music and a scientific principle. By forcing their minds in new directions, by attempting to explore the strange space between the given points, they end up somewhere they never expected. I?m hoping players of my Glass Bead Game will end up in the same place.

As members of the Steel Watch, the Watchmen pit their blades against those of the criminal syndicate the Night Lords, and now in a ten-month crack down, they’re playing for keeps. Together with your team of fellow fencers, coordinate your moves and strategies for maximum effectiveness against an enemy that never seems to run out of criminals. Do you and your fellow players have what it takes to take down the forces of anarchy, or will the Kingdom fall on your watch?

Object of the Game

Each player controls one member of a team of the Steel Watch, arresting criminals in the name of the King. The game takes place over a ten-month period during which the King is cracking down on a criminal syndicate known as the Night Lords. Each month the Steel Watch is sent out to arrest a new batch of criminals.

Every session begins at the Tower of Blades, the headquarters of the Steel Watch. In the first session, this time is used to create characters, which is framed as the characters arriving at the Tower of Blades for the first time. In later sessions, this time represents the Watchmen recuperating from their last arrest and preparing for the next, spending the Victory Points that they earned in the last session. Players usually spend about ten to twenty minutes at the Tower of Blades.

The rest of the session concerns the Arrest, where one of the Watchmen takes Sentry, observing the battle from the perimeter to watch for criminals who escape. That Watchman’s player controls the Criminals while the other players control their Watchmen, trying to subdue the Criminals before they escape. The role of Sentry rotates through all the players.

If, by the end of the ten arrests, the players are actually able to arrest all sixty-five members of the Night Lords, they will be hailed by the King as heroes of the law, and awarded titles and lands that will preserve their family names for generations. If they can’t get all sixty-five, well, there’s always more mercenary work to be had somewhere.

Hi/Lo Heroes is a role playing game set in a city of costumed heroes. In role playing games, players imagine that they are the heroes in a great interactive adventure story. One player, the Game Master helps to provide the backdrop for the story and takes the roles of Villains and Normals that the other players (called Heroes) will meet and interact with.

Author’s Note: “Hi/Lo Heroes” is a more developed version of my EZ Supers 24 Hour RPG submission.

Wow! Hero City! I can?t believe that I finally here! Hero City!

This is so exciting! I keep looking up… up in the sky… trying to catch a glimpse of Double Shot or Atomic… Wow! Hero City!!

Oh… I know it wasn?t always called ?Hero City.? The name was changed when the first costumed heroes appeared to fight crime. You remember? Sure ya do! This is your home town. I?m the tourist here.,. But hey… did you hear that? Was that a cry for help?

What? You have to go? Sure, sure! Sorry that you have to rush off like this.., it was nice talking… Whoa… she sure left in a hurry.

Wow! Hero City! I can?t believe that I?m finally here!