Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Announcing Three New Designers

Ginger Goat is pleased to announce that we have hired three new freelance designers to help us with our current projects. Dymphna Coy, Ruth Tillman, and Avonelle Wing each bring amazing storytelling ability and game design skill to our little company, and we're honored to work with them.

Dymphna is co-designing a game with Josh T. Jordan that we haven't announced yet. We can say that it is a one-shot game about a funeral set in a Conan-esque world.

Ruth and Avonelle are teaming up to help me design supplements for Dangers Untold. I'm behind on fulfilling some of the perks for Kickstarter backers of DU, and these talented designers are currently in the process of saving my bacon. The supplements they design will be available to backers first, but will eventually be available for sale to all fans of Shoshana Kessock's beginner-friendly larp.

These three designers each did an outstanding job during our recent open call, and I (Josh) am personally thrilled to be able to work with each of them. I know that they will help us help you to tell the honest, sweet, heartbreaking, funny, diverse stories that we all love so much.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Inspiration for Plot Driven Games


If you're looking for inspiration for designing an original story game, I suggest this book, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them. It's designed as a handbook for fiction writers, and it includes descriptions and writer's checklists for 20 different plots, like romance, exploration, and "wretched excess."
Most rpgs follow the exploration plotline or one or two of the others. If you are the sort of story game designer who can write rules at the plot level rather than the character level, you could use one of the other 18 plots as the basis of your game.
That's not to say I dislike character driven, actor-stance games. Just to say that I think there's room on the market for more plot driven, writer-stance and director-stance games.