Push: New Thinking About Roleplaying

The time has come. Form blazing sword!

Bleeding Play, the new blog and online home of Push, is now in existence. This is part of the larger blog-consolidation effort that I have been making recently, but also reflects changes in how I think it’s best to get things done on the internet.

Over the last few years of trying to put Push 1 and 2 together, I’ve come to the conclusion that a forum, like our old haunt on The Forge or the current Plays Well forum, is not really supportive of the kinds of things we need to accomplish. Forums need a minimum amount of traffic and regular posting to get things going. Putting Push together often involves kicks and starts, irregular periods where posting happens frequently followed by long droughts where nothing happens. Also, I spend a fair bit of time trying to fight spam on the forum, rather than accomplishing stuff. We need an alternative method.

I also think that structuring Push development as a group blog creates a different kind of working environment for contributors, commentators, and the other people who help put Push together. If the social environment that surrounds Push can be more like The 20 x 20 Room has been in the past, I think that can only be a good thing.

I also like the idea that Push development can be a public process, so people can get a clear sense of how we put a volume together. The final, edited version of all the articles will still only be available in Push or from the individual contributors, but putting the working drafts up for open comment does some good things for us as well, I think. Articles can start as simply a blog post or a posted outline. Then that can be moved to it’s own designated page and future posts can slowly expand the original until an entire first draft is developed. This is the way I’ve been working on some recent design projects and the way Shreyas and I set up Secret Wars to run. Our success in that format leads me to believe this is a better model for running Push.

That said, putting a volume of Push together is clearly a collaborative process, so the preliminary plan of action I’ve sketched out here will doubtlessly be altered once other people start arriving and doing there thing. Any creative collaboration (including playing a roleplaying game) is all about the process of negotiation and I will continue to see my role as facilitating the negotiation and creation process.

Future news and development of Push will all take place on Bleeding Play. Move your bookmarks and feeds now, so you don’t miss it!

The Push blog is in the midst of forming a giant monster-fighting robot. It looks a bit messy right now, but once we wrangle these lions together and form the Blazing Sword… it’ll all make perfect sense.

Over at Story Games, Matthijs Holter wrote:

I just read John & Emily’s articles. They both gave me a lot to think about, and a lot of very good ideas for my current campaign.John’s article is full of the sort of stuff that easily slips by you if you don’t pay attention - like a comment that “players need to be proactive for this to work”, which deserves to be - and is - a whole article in itself. His laid-back, non-edgy writing style often fools me into thinking he doesn’t really have anything important he wants to say, but he does.

Emily’s article starts a bit slow - a lot of facts I think many people already know - but does a good job of categorizing different techniques, providing clear and concise examples, both from game texts and personal experience. Almost every page, I had to stop and jot down an idea for my campaign, or for a whole new game.

If I’d read the articles when the book came out, I’m not sure they would have had the same impact at all. I read them the morning after a session when I had a lot of ideas and things to work out, and the articles addressed several issues I was thinking about. Yay!

And then Ryan Macklin wrote:

I just got my copy of Push Vol. 1 a couple weeks ago. I’ve been reading it piecemeal, digesting bits and thinking about the material as I go along.I enjoy reading games and then reading designer’s notes. So reading Jonathan Walton talk about how “Waiting for the Queen/Tea at Midnight” came into being alongside the game was very cool.Shreyas Sampat’s game was fascinating, and something I was able to use as a talking point with a friend who is into cultural anthropology but has also been burned on RPGs (thanks to some bad roleplaying experiences). I don’t know if I’ll ever play the game, but it is an eye-opening bit of interesting. I partly wish that there were some designers notes on it, but at the same time the lead does enough to set up the actual idea — what if RPGs grew out of something other than wargaming — so it doesn’t really need the added info.

The contrast I’ll make here is that in how each, to me, handles “New Thinking About Roleplaying.” Jonathan talks about the idea itself some before going to the actual application whereas Shreyas jumps right out of the game with application. Both are awesome and rather complimentary. Shreya’s piece seems to follow the “show me, don’t tell me” model, whereas Jonathan does half-and-half. I like both, but I don’t think I would enjoy an issue that was more focused on showing at the determent of telling.

I can’t say I found Emily Care Boss’s article particularly insightful, but then I’ve been dining from the plate of new gaming idea for some time now so the topic isn’t new to me. That being said, I think it’s well-organized and interesting. And there are plenty of folks for whom these topics are new — there are a couple people in my gaming groups who are going to be handed my copy when I’m done and told to read this article specifically.

Eero Tuovinen has some interesting things to say, but unfortunately I don’t. It was a neat look into a different gaming culture and the effects of globalization, and I’d be interesting in reading more such things, but I don’t have any particular comments.

I am a bit ashamed to admit that I haven’t finished John Kim’s article yet. Rather, I haven’t finished it a second time. It’s interesting, but I need to digest it a bit longer before I’d have more to say.

As far as the commentary goes, I’m a fan. I particularly like it when the commentary offers an alternative point of view or some other reference point for the discussion.

Brennan tells me that we’ve recently sold out of the first 50 copies of Push vol 1 that Indie Press Revolution was distributing for us. I just sent them another 50 copies. According to Lulu, that means total print sales are now at around 175 copies, after little more than six months. That’s pretty exciting.

I keep meaning to run the finances on the first six months of Push sales (which ended in mid-January). But things have been busy here, since my housemate just left for Iraq. I’ll try to post those figures soon.

Shreyas Sampat’s Push 1 game Mridangam just earned a second runner-up Outie Award for Best Sui Generis RPG 2006 from (potential Push 2 commentator) Ken Hite! Congratulations, Shreyas!

A bunch of terrific games were mentioned this year. Check out the list compiled by (Push 1 contributor) John Kim for links to all of them.

Proposal guidelines for Push 2 are posted here. I don’t know why they haven’t been posted here yet. My bad. Get additional proposals to me soon, please! I don’t need much. Just a paragraph or so.

Basic planning for Push 2 has already begun in the new Push forums. Those of you who’ve read some or all of Push 1, I’d especially love to have your comments in this thread, so we get feedback on the first volume and learn how to make the second one even better.

Push Vol 1 got a nice mention in two recent RPGnet threads: a potential buyer asking for additional info and Phil Reed talking about how great Lulu is. Yay for us!

And check this out: I’m blogging here again! Guess that means Volume 2 is about to get underway…

Michael Babbitt just wrote a neat review of Emily Care Boss’ article for Push 1.

GenCon was awesome.  There were only 4 copies of the book left on Sunday morning (out of 45 or so that were for sale) and they disappeared by 2pm.  Everybody I talked to about the project thought it was both awesome and needed.

I only ran about 4 demos of Waiting/Tea, because it’s kind of an awkward game to demo, but that didn’t seem to affect sales much.  It still sold like hotcakes.  And Adam Dray wanted to play Waiting/Tea again, he dug it so much.

Tim Kleinert (The Mountain Witch), Mike Sugarbaker (OgreCave), and Kevin Allen Jr. (Primitive) all said they want to write articles for Push 2, plus Ken Hite (ridiculous amounts of things) said he’d love to write commentary for it. Exciting.

I got personally interviewed for the OgreCave Audio Report and then all of the new indie folks recorded a group podcast for the Sons of Kryos (which Judd called one of the favorite things they’ve ever recorded).  Both were awesome and hopefully my parts will be edited so I won’t sound so inarticulate.

Thomas Robertson says we should start a Push podcast about recent developments in design and play.  I floated this idea with Paul Tevis and Judd Karlson, who were encouraging. Maybe it would help me learn to speak slowly and coherantly in public. And it would be great to talk about recent developments with other smart folks.  We’ll see if we can’t put something together.

Copies sold so far? We’re getting close to 75, I think, including PDFs and the ones sold at GenCon. A few recent PDF buyers have said they’d have found it sooner if it was available on RPGnow or e23 or DriveThruRPG, so I’m considering those options. Not sure yet.

Okay, so I’m hopefully going to be working with the fine folks at Indie Press Revolution (IPR) to set up distribution of the full PDF version of Vol 1 and maybe for the print version of Vol 2. I don’t know how soon that’s going to materialize, given that those folks are planning like crazy for GenCon.

In the meantime, folks can PayPal me $10 and I’ll email you the full PDF and a copy of the cover.  I’ll also add you to a list so you can recieve any updated versions of the PDF that we prepare in the future.

Let me know if you have any problems and I’ll see what I can do.

The final, beautiful proofs are in and Push is finally on sale! 

In addition to a fabulous cover by Clio Chiang, Push Volume One contains the following:

Emily Care Boss, in Collaborative Roleplaying: Reframing the Game, provides an overview of games which seek to distribute control of the play experience more evenly among the players involved and speculates on the future of this type of play.

John H. Kim, in Immersive Story Methods for Tabletop Roleplaying, describes his own experiences planning an on-going game in which each player’s character was the protagonist of their own story and offers advice on how others can do the same.

Shreyas Sampat’s game, Mridangam, draws on the vocabulary of classical Indian dance, handling all out-of-character negotiations and narrative structuring through the silent exchange of gestures between players.

Eero Tuovinen, in Against the Geek, Choice, expresses his concerns about the rampant Americanization of Finnish tabletop roleplaying and explains how his small publishing operation is working against the current trend.

Finally, there’s me, Jonathan Walton, and my game, Waiting for the Queen/Tea at Midnight, which is inspired by early computer games of the “get lamp” variety and strictly limits character choices while not limiting a character’s ability to express themselves.

If that isn’t enough to get your engine going, it also contain’s ongoing commentary (in the margins) by the talents of Victor Gjisbers, Jessica Hammer, Brand Robins, Annie Rush, Paul Tevis, and Mo Turkington.

Yay!