So, what's everyone's game design pedigree in the Den?

[OgreBattle]

I know FrankTrollman and AncientHistory worked on Shadowrun (which books?). Did K too? Anyone else work on published games? Not just tabletop RPG related but anything that can be called a game.

As for myself, I make social/mobile games for your mother.

[Longes]

I've made Lord of the Rings game for Elektronika MK-52 calculator in my childhood, and some small games when I was learning programing, but nothing else

[nikita]

I have written a published adventure and contributed to equipment and general source books as well as published articles about Twilight 2000 and later Heavy Gear in my wild youth.

I am currently teaching computer game making.

[Ancient History]

Fanbits like Farcast and some fanzine stuff aside, I think this covers everything I'm credited on (could never be arsed keeping track of the uncredited bits): http://www.the-unpublishable.com/p/published.html

[Concise Locket]

As a graphic designer I've freelanced on several PDF-only products that you can find on drivethrurpg.com and the like.

Mongoose has an open submissions policy for the Traveller line and I've had a few puff pieces published as a writer. No mechanics development so nothing to get excited about.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Hmm, not much, unfortunately. I did some coding on the Desolation MUD, and now that I scour the memory banks I recall that I did some writing for a friend's CRPG design "thesis" many moons ago.

I hope to be demoing "Castle on the Edge of the Moon" at the 2014 HPLFF/Cthulhucon, though. So give me time.

[RobbyPants]

I made a computer game that plays like a cross between a Rogue-like and the old NES version of Zelda, but I never published it. I also never completed the world map due to technical difficulties.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I've been working with some friends on an MtG cube made entirely of custom cards for several years. (it was playable when I got there and continues to be so)

[Heisenberg]

My mother is grateful.

[Josh_Kablack]

In Chronological Order

• Playtester on Guardians CCG. (forgotten CCG from the age of everyone trying to cash in on MtG's early success. Paid in pizza, soda and promo decks)
• Playtester on Exalted 1e. (also some uncredited first-pass edits and er "inspirations" for a few 1e exalted supplements my friends wrote. Paid in promo copies)
• WizO_Pony on WotC Boards for like a year (not actually game design, but got paychecks from WotC - even at only four hours per week, this was the most lucrative gaming gig I will ever have)
• Playtester for Puzzle Strike 3rd edition / Shadows expansion. (credited, but completely unpaid.)
• Co-Author of Puzzle Strike official strategy guide (with a lot of other folks also credited, but none of us paid.)
• Playtester on unreleased, may-or-may-not reach release boardgames Cool Table, Ants, and Who's your Heavenly Father. (worked for vague promises of future beer to be delivered in the event of successful kickstarter campaigns)

[Mask_De_H]

I've made a couple of full-ish games for design contests on Something Awful, but nothing published or legitimate. Also was designing that pre-5th edition 5th edition back when we gave a fuck.

Currently designing something with FATE Core as a base and trying to adapt some of our better ideas (general design tenets, a modified CAN, branching condition tracks, Really Big Squares) into it.

e: Sirlin never paid you for testing or writing his guide Josh? That's kind of bullshit. I mean, I did a little playtesting work on Yomi before he actually started selling it, but nothing credited.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Mask, we should talk about how it goes. I'm adapting FATE Core as well.

[JonSetanta]

I used to design d6 tabletop boardgames with my brother, sculpting our own figurines out of clay.
He still does, I don't.

Correction: He's since moved on to designing small standalone card games such as one wherein you have a bunch of Clue-like Victorian party guests and a murder mystery trying to figure out who did it.

[Koumei]

Before coming to the Den, I had only done a bunch of homebrewed stuff for my own games, other than creating some content and getting a mention for something which was going to be published until it fell through (mainly licensing: a group had made Geneseed, a 40kd20 thing, back before DH was a thing, and GW wanted $40,000 for the licence. So they decided to scrub the IP off of it and turn it into their own thing, but without it being tied to the ultrapopular 40k, they just didn't really have the motivation to hire illustrators and publish it).

Looking back, I'm glad it wasn't published with my name in the credits, as these days I understand that should instead go on someone's permanent criminal record. But it was the closest I got to published works. That might not necessarily be true in the future though.

[Neon Sequitur]

I've only got one RPG credit to date: a little-known Star Hero setting published by Blackwyrm Games in 2011 called Terracide.

I'm currently working very hard with the folks at Pinnacle on an all new expanded version of it for Savage Worlds, to be released early next year.

<--- see how hard I'm working!

[Josh_Kablack]

e: Sirlin never paid you for testing or writing his guide Josh? That's kind of bullshit. I mean, I did a little playtesting work on Yomi before he actually started selling it, but nothing credited.

Only kind of. At no point was I under the illusion that I would receive compensation for anything, and I would have written much of what I wrote for that guide anyways. (you can tell by how the date stamps the first couple of character-specific guides I posted are well before the discussion of putting an official guide together)

But, then again the complete lack of even a bit of promo material is a large part of the reason why I didn't take Sirlin up on his offer of a more formal title and running "official" events on his site - there's a line between being an information communist and being a sucker.

[icyshadowlord]

I made a computer game that plays like a cross between a Rogue-like and the old NES version of Zelda, but I never published it. I also never completed the world map due to technical difficulties.

What program did you use? I've been wanting to learn programming and coding for some time, and I have a version of RPG Maker I've yet to try out. That, and I'd want to put at least something on my otherwise empty game design pedigree...

[Koumei]

I can't speak for Robby (I'm not a ventriloquist, after all), but you can use python to make ASCii roguelikes pretty easily. As in, "You could probably make something that works at all in an afternoon" easy. And I think that's important. You need to be able to get some kind of visible success really early if you want people to stick around and use it.

With a lot more effort, actual sprites can be used as well.

The obvious recommendation for people who want to make a game is "If you're already familiar with a language, use that one". But if that's not the case, then for this type of game, python is pretty good.

[icyshadowlord]

I'm not familiar with any language, sadly.

[Omegonthesane]

Before I started uni, I fucked around with GMaker and RPGToolkit. In the latter I ultimately made an execrable FF ripoff that never saw release; in the former, I made a platform game with questionable design goals, an unfinished and buggy sequel for it, and a bullet hell shooter which once again had questionable design goals, all because I was fanboying over I Wanna Be The Guy at the time.

The source code for all three is lost forever, which may or may not be for the best. In particular the shooter never got a good ending, instead having a screen that promised I was coming back to write a better one; given how much of that game was an exercise in trolling the player, I am retroactively claiming that was a meta joke.

[Starmaker]

Koumei: do you by any chance know of any IF/CYOA hacks for python? Parser IF is of the devil, and I need more UI in the game than Twine seems to be able to allow natively.

[Koumei]

Unfortunately no. My python skills are limited such that I could do such a thing, but A) the player would need to have python on their PC, and B) every "page" would be a module, and every choice within that page would call up another module without ending the prior one, so it'd eat a lot of memory.

[DSMatticus]

Koumei: do you by any chance know of any IF/CYOA hacks for python? Parser IF is of the devil, and I need more UI in the game than Twine seems to be able to allow natively.

What sort of features are you looking for, exactly? Not that I'm all that familiar with CYOA tools.

but A) the player would need to have python on their PC, and B) every "page" would be a module, and every choice within that page would call up another module without ending the prior one

Instead of having a module execute the next module directly, have each module return the number of the next module (and then you handle module execution in a loop). That is still incredibly hackish, but it gets rid of the recursion. Ideally, you'd want every page to be an instance of the same class instead of this one module per page thing, because that would remove so much copy paste work.

[Starmaker]

Koumei: do you by any chance know of any IF/CYOA hacks for python? Parser IF is of the devil, and I need more UI in the game than Twine seems to be able to allow natively.

What sort of features are you looking for, exactly? Not that I'm all that familiar with CYOA tools.

Something like this [no email required].

[sabs]

Okay, Choose your own adventure.
I thought that was Cover your own ass. ANd I was trying to figure what kind of python hack would do that.