Opie Games News

Many positive words are said and written about the creative openness of the game design community. My personal experiences and endeavors support this sentiment. In general, people in this industry are helpful and supportive of one another, which contributes to the pleasure of working in it. Even in this friendly social circle, I am especially pleased to encounter truly fantastic people. Pablo and Tove of Worldshapers Board Games are just such people.

After several months of having just a place-holder page up, we have finally relaunched the website on an upgraded platform. Given the monumental effort to complete this and the many projects we have in progress, we have focused on restoring website function and the 5 years of existing content (at least the most popular content).

New to the site is a listing of our Services so it is clearer how we might engage with you on your next writing or game production project. We will also start highlighting some of our recent and current projects on the Projects page.

In November, I started offering services to the RPG design and development community, particularly the community content creators that publish on the OneBookShelf (OBS) platform. I have had the pleasure of contributing to several projects that have been or are in progress to be posted on the OBS RPG publishing sites DMsGuild (D&D 5E only) and DriveThruRPG (anything RPG). The content there can be available for free, “pay what you want”, or for a fee.

To date, my completed contributions have been primarily as editor and/or proofreader but writing and design projects are in progress. Here is an example of the types of projects: Orpheus Mission Reports Volume 1. I am involved in several other projects and will highlight them as they are published.

Calculated Risks: An Eberron Adventure is an actual play podcast set in the world of Eberron using D&D 5th Edition. Starring R P Davis, Alina Popescu, Mike Suteu, and featuring Dungeon Master Travis Legge. Watch LIVE on Twitch Fridays 10 am CST. Twitch.tv/plasticageplays

I am pleased to be writing the promotional copy for Calculated Risks: An Eberron Adventure. For Season 1, I have written an introduction to the adventure and characters and a season-level synopsis. These are complete and episodic promotional content for Season 2 is in progress (e.g., “previously on”, synopsis, and full summary).

Since early November, we have been participating in the playtesting community for Oceans by North Star Games. Oceans is the next stand-alone game in the award-winning Evolution series by Dominic Crapuchettes and, as voted by the BGG community, is one of the most anticipated games of 2019.

It has been a pleasure playtesting the game and watching it evolve (yep, I said that) into what is certainly not going to disappoint Evolution series fans. If you count yourself among them, or are new to the series, you will want to watch for the Kickstarter in Q1 2019 or for the game to hit the shelves at your favorite online store or FLGS later in the year.

We have been providing multiple services for a few small game publishers that are preparing their projects for Kickstarter. We will announce more as those designs complete and their Kickstarter projects launch. The services provided have ranged from editing rules and Kickstarter pages to playtesting and providing statistics to identify fragility in the design. In particular, we have been providing advice on solo play modes.

Setup

The one statement that covers my 2017 goals for Opie Games is, “Get back in the game.” Starting in March of 2015 and continuing through about September of 2016, I had significant “distractions” from doing anything related to Opie Games; a flooded house that needed repairs, the culmination of a huge 3-year project at work, and other significant obligations pulled me away from this pursuit. Hopefully, 2017 is a year of change in a positive sense and I can get back to my preoccupation with game design and back on a blogging routine.

The easiest statement about what Opie Games has planned for 2015 is, “more of what we did in 2014.” Obviously, generally I would like to do everything better, too. A few, more exact, 2015 objectives are:

Although I was working on my current game designs much earlier and planning for my foray into the industry, I essentially started Opie Games in January 2014 so it seems natural (in addition to the new year) to review what has been accomplished through Opie Games in 2014 now. As identified on the About page, “Opie Games is the home of table top game designs and musings by John Parker and links to resources that may be helpful to the beginning designer or the person with an affinity toward table top games. Hopefully, you find the content here interesting.”

I set out in early 2014 with the intent of building this website and starting a blog. It has taken me most of the year to get a real start to it. At this point I have about a dozen articles posted and I continue to improve the website. I have focused on working on game designs and posting my design notebook. Eventually, I will take the time to start improving the look and feel of the site. Fortunately, I have built it on a solid CMS so I can address theming the site later and will lose no effort.

Thanks to Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games for his persistence in blogging and encouraging others to do the same. It has only taken me 11 months to heed his advice...

I have set the bar for myself at blogging 3 times each week and posting one new article in the Design Notebook each week.