REMEMBER: The contest ends Sunday April 1st at Midnight / Monday April 2nd at 00:01:00 AM Eastern Standard Time (US East Coast)
Hi all, I‘ll be appending information soon into the Rules Thread and the www.game-chef.com site, but here‘s a heads up.
To submit your final game entry to the Game Chef Competition:
1) In your game, make a „Cover Sheet“ (generally make this the first page of your final doc, pdf, txt file). On your cover sheet, write: * YOUR NAME or PSEUDONYM * YOUR FEEDBACK GROUP NAME (if you tapped in) * THE INGREDIENTS THAT YOU USED * A brief 1-3 sentence „BACK COVER BLURB“ that tells us what your game is about
This „back cover blurb“ is important for us as we cross-post the entries to www.1km1kt.net.
2) Create a post in This Thread Right Here, and Attach your document or archive to your post. Most formats are recognized, but the common ones are PDF, DOC, RTF, ZIP, RAR, TXT. If you decide later (before the contest ends) to make a change and resubmit your work, you can Edit your post and delete the attachment, then re-attach a new attachment.
In the post itself, feel free to write whatever you want, but also please post your Back Cover Blurb again into your post. See the example post below.
3) After your back cover blurb in the post, if you wish to NOT have your entry uploaded and archived at www.1km1kt.net, please say so briefly. Something like „Please do not archive my entry at 1km1kt.net“. Please note that the default is to have all Game Chef entries archived at that site: They won‘t republish the games, you have complete control over the content (you can revise it, or even take it down completely), and 1km1kt has been an awesome help in the past with cataloging and archiving Game Chef and 24 Hour RPG entries. However, we understand if you want to maintain 100% control over your game, so we won‘t lock the contest down by requiring all participants to submit their entries to 1km1kt. Please do consider leaving it there, though, as a footprint of the game in its early stages of development.
If you wish to have your entry archived at 1km1kt, no need to say anything here; by default it will be archived.
4) Please: No other conversation, message, post that DOES NOT CONTAIN YOUR GAME here. Any post, public or whispered here, that does not contain an attached entry will be DELETED without being read. This is to make sure that we get an accurate count and so that no entries are accidentally left out or forgotten. If you have questions or technical issues, please create a new topic to discuss this.
5) Write this down: GAMECHEF (atmark) GMAIL (dot) COM. If for some reason this website is down, has SQL issues or whatever, and it is starting approach the last minute on Saturday evening, then submit your work to the email address listed. Do not submit your work to both the email and this website: The email is only there if there is a technical issue when it comes time to submit your work. This is just a backup plan in case something goes wrong.
(This is an example post, complete with cover-letter attached RPG)
Hey all, whew that was hard. Thanks to my team for their feedback in helping to produce this work!
Blurb: „In the land of warriors and wizards, one class stands above all in the war between humanity and the Dragons: The Chocolatier. Producing delicious chocolate sweets, they roam the countryside challenging each other for the right to fight the dragons, and create hope for the children of the landed gentry. A gritty, serious, thought-provoking game for 3-5 players.“
Is it hubris, being the first to post in the submissions thread, nearly a week before things are due? Probably.
Blurb:
„You work for the Fates, manipulating your destinies to make sure everything goes according to The Plan. But you broke the cardinal rule of FATEâ?™s employees: Never look into your own future. Worse, you didnâ?™t like what you saw there. Now, youâ?™re trying to change your own destiny, with your former colleagues working to stop you.“
This is, as of the time of posting, an unfinished manuscript. I am posting it now because I am about to go out to the hospital for a minor operation, and I don‘t know how badly I‘m going to react to the sedation they are using. It should only put me out for the rest of the day, but I may not be able to do any more work if it takes me in a funny way. As a precaution, I‘m uploading what I‘ve got finished now. I‘d appreciate it if people didn‘t download it, as it would embarrass me for people to read this junk before I have time to properly edit it (it‘s no doubt full of mistakes). Still, better safe than sorry.
[Update] Feel like I‘ve been hit in the jaw by a buick, but otherwise recovering well. Should be able to finish the game off to a respectable level of completion unless the stitches fall out or something equally unpleasant happens to me.
[Final Update] OK, I just uploaded what I think is the final version of the game. If the file you download doesn‘t have a pretty carnival mask on the cover, then you‘ve got an old version of the file and need to grab an update.
Blurb:
France, 1870. A terrible, incurable disease is ravaging the population, leaving its victims twitching and writhing in agony, waiting for a merciful death to claim them. Two factions have arisen to combat this dreaded plague, each with their own beliefs about its nature, each with their own methods of tackling it. Who shall be the one to save all of France from its dread effects? Who, in the end, is right? That is something for you to decide.
[PS. Noted someone further down had asked not to be archived at 1KM1KT. I didn‘t know it was possible to opt out of this feature, but if it is, I would also like my entry to not be archived. I like to sell these games after the contests, and it makes it harder if people can get the majority of the text for free, no matter how much further development you do in the meantime.]
well its done for the most part. I am still waiting on soem feedback from some people but I might as well post it now. I always overwork things and this feels done to me. I might edit it some more, but like everyone else I have some real life things going on that might make me miss posting so here it is.
Best of luck to all!
Greyknight1
Blurb:
Welcome to Paranormal Investigations Incorporated. Our mission is to identify, record and resolve as many paranormal occurrences as we can. Beware however, this job is not without potential danger, the secrets you may uncover may just shatter your world.
{Edit} Forgot to say:
Please do not cross post or archive a copy of this game on 1km1kt. Thank You
5-second pitch: Philip K. Dick‘s Cops & Robbers: The RPG
Blurb: The nation is on the brink of financial ruin. Only you, the schizonautsâ?”government agents on mnemonic drugs designed by a paranoid A.I.â?”have any chance of finding and stopping the criminals, halting the death of the national economy. But what if the criminals turn out to be you?
Problem: My upload‘s larger than the allowed size of 2.98MB. Please advise.
For the time being, grab the file here: http://www.evilhat.com/lab/schizonauts-game-chef-edition.zip (may be updated prior to deadline)
Edit #2: Ahhhh, there we have it. If I attach each piece separately, it‘ll take it, but not all three as one zipfile.
It‘s 1886. You‘re a Secret Service agent charged with protecting the dignity and grandeur of the Presidency. The thing is, old Grover‘s a very bad man with some nasty secrets - and his sister Rose, the bachelor President‘s First Lady, is on a mission to air out his dirty linen. If she does, you‘re out of the best job you‘ve ever had. What‘s the plan, sport?
The Paths
Separate cover sheet
The main document is here also
It can be posted to 1km1kt
I might publish it soon, would appreciate comments directed that way
Thanks
edit: upload with last changes for the contest
Life has had me pretty for the last week and I could not create as much of a setting info as I would have liked, but the game is complete and playable. I may continue working on it if anyone shows any interest in seeing more.
Blurb:
A gambler trying to win the next handâ?¦
A doctor desperately trying to save an innocent lifeâ?¦
A swordsman fighting to save his ownâ?¦
All these people are unknowingly weaving the threads of destiny to improve their odds. But what if you could knowingly control these abilities, would you be a great hero? Or will your actions unbalance fate and threaten destroy yourself and the world?
What if you woke up one day with no memories, a few items on you, and a letter stating you agreed to some strange wager? Would you want to find out what‘s going on? Would you want to find out about yourself?
After everything is said and done, would you want to still be that person?
College is a time for experimentation, so when your friend Faust suggested selling your souls for an open tap of demonic intervention you jumped at the chance. Especially since you know something that snappily dressed demon doesn‘t - souls don‘t actually exist. Faust and Friends is a game of college friends who have sold their souls to acquire authority and wealth, pleasures beyond imagining, and ancient secrets and lore.
Thanks to Curufea from my group, and Mister Duck and Caledonian for in person discussions. Also thanks to JackieSixty, Algi, Secret, and Remi Treuer for their feedback on Currency - my original front-runner game chef submission. I‘m hoping to complete that in the near term.
Unfortunately I have to run a mini-con this weekend, so while I may even playtest Faust and Friends, I won‘t be able to modify it effectively after this morning. So I hope you all enjoy, and without further ado:
Shielded behind the Mecha‘s chest panel, no one sees who you are.
In the cold corridors of the space station, no one cares who you are.
Memories lost to the human subconsciousness, do you even know who you are?
Thanks to feedback group Mu and everyone else who had given me input and the moral support needed to make this game!
Special thanks to Fred Hicks for the character sheet!
Please don‘t upload it to 1km1kt or redistribute it further, thank you.
The Desert Rose Is the Desert an inter-dimensional nexus? A world on the edge of dreams? A twisted, magical version of the Arabian Nights? You have no idea. But to obtain your heart‘s desire, you must find the Desert Rose.
Wow, 41 pages (including cards)! I‘m surprised at how much I managed to get out.
Regretfully, I‘ll be bowing out before the judging begins. Life has become busier than I had hoped, and I will not be able to judge anyone else‘s entry. Still, thought I‘d throw out what I‘ve got if anyone wants to see it.
Dunno if this can be reposted to 1km1kt with the other entries under Game Chef rules, but if it can that would be great by me.
Thanks for hosting such a great contest. To all of my co-game-writers: you guys rock.
They said pop culture would destroy the world, but it is the only thing that survived.
The year isâ?¦no longer important. Earth is gone, blown apart and replaced by a giant alien battle station called The Rose. You are an alien, a Good Guy, fighting in a war against the Bad Guys. It does not matter where you are from, what you look like, or your gender. Everything you got going for you comes from your human heroes, selected from a hundred yearsâ?™ worth of radio, TV, and Internet signals still floating around the solar system. You‘ve got your style, you‘ve got your threads, and you‘ve got your marching orders…Time to go kick ass!
You‘re suffering from a rare form of global amnesia, a total loss of memory. Your only hope of recovery lies with a group of people with the same condition and Mnemosyne, an experimental drug that allows other people access to your memories. Will you be able to help each other remember?
Mortal and Fae realms collide. The lines between worlds are weakened and strife stalks the land. In answer, Powers arise. One will become the Shadow, one the Rose, one the Thorn, one the Hidden, one the Shorn. The Shadow hounds the others, while they fight to discover its secret and turn it from its trajectory of destruction or conquest.
Players create a fantasy world and weave threads of magic through realms of light and shadow. A role playing game of magic and intrigue for 3 to 5 people.
The Palace is Your World.
Stagnation threatens to bring down its towers.
Chaos threatens to crumble its walls.
The cast-offs rot the floors from below.
And the art of politics and warfare distract from the true danger.
And yet, these four are your only weapons to save the Palace.
BACK COVER BLURB: You‘re looking for enlightenment at the end of your life, so you spend your life savings on a drug that helps you travel back through your memories and find a pathway to emptiness - the legendary Palace at the End of Time. Once you find the Palace you‘re assured that after death, the self will dissolve and leave nothing. Along the way, will you help the other ones on their journey or will you devour more of the drug to make sure you succeed?
Wow… I did it.
First complete RPG ever. Thanks to you guys.
Silent Archaea In a war-torn future, an elite unit of soldiers roams the depths of space exploring Palaces, huge warships frozen in space and time.
They use their training and sense-enhancing drugs developed by the military to defeat unknown enemies and to learn straight from the Palace´s Memory Flow. But beware, for without teamwork they could easily fall into the mouth of madness.
A note on the documents - the Sourcebook is two weeks worth of compiling research and reference material and is therefore „not my work“, and is not necessary to play the game. The only document that needs to be looked at for judging purposes is the Versailles Rulebook. However, for a complete game - all four of these attachments are recommended.
[last minute edit]
Darnit - it‘s too late to edit the documents again, but let me just add that there should be a blank page after the cover page (or print the cover page separately). Otherwise the page numbering is screwed up.
[further annoying edit]
The image on page 6 overlaps and makes the text unreadable (grr) - it should be 1. Class (1 card) 2. Birth (1 card) 3. Body (1 card) 4. Beliefs (2 cards) 5. Reputations (2 cards) 6. Favours (2 cards) 7. Repartee (2 cards) 8. Skills (5 cards) 9. Contacts (3 cards) 10.Currency (1 card)
Versailles
The roleplaying game of intrigue and betrayal in the court of King Louis XV. As minor nobles of lesser families, players contend in witty repartee with the the residents of the Palace of Versailles in hopes of winning their confidences or swaying them to their causes. Tarot cards determine the success or failure of every verbal encounter.
For several months, the yakuza families of Tokyo have been at war. Tonight, the war comes to a climax at a massive pachinko parlor called „The Palace.“ Each player will take the role of a member of a different yakuza family, trying to make sure that their family comes out ahead in the war.
Thank you to everyone who helped make Game Chef 07 happen.
Schemata
For centuries, five religious Orders have protected the surviving relics of the Garden of Eden. Despite their efforts, they could not stop Iconoclasts from stealing the relics. Now only one relic remains in their careâ?”the First Rose. Using the power of the First Rose, the orders have trained their youngest to reclaim the stolen relics of the Garden. These claimants can shift reality to their will, and they will take the fight to the iconoclasts. The Iconoclasts will be defeated; the relics will be returned; and the First Rose will be protected.
„Youâ?™re locked in a vicious turf war over the drug trade. Blood has been spilled, memories forged and vendettas entrenched.
Can one boss achieve domination?
Push the gear, tool up your crew and slice any bastardo in your way.
A story game for 2-6 players, GaW involves strategic resource management, card-play and role-play. „
You and your mouse friends have escaped the Kingâ?™s Pleasure Palace where giant braziers of smoking embers have clouded your head and erased your long-term memories. Now you must remember who you were and what you were once good at to survive in the Hollow.
It is done! I was trying to write a sample adventure as well, but I don‘t quite have the time to get that one finished…
MNEMONIC GHOSTS
BACK COVER SUMMARY: Mnemonic Ghosts is a game of horror, for mature players. The player-characters take the part of secret agents, who have sacrificed their bodies to gain the ability of possessing other people through chemical means. Through this drug-based possession, they do black operations in a steampunk world to earn their bodies back from their masters.
The immortal elves of the Eternal Court are masters of the world, enslaving the lesser races so that their most precious possessions â?“ their memories â?“ can be harvested for the pleasure of the decadent elven lords. The greatest fear amongst the immortal elves is madness; the greatest taboo is the mention that the stolen memories of others is the path to insanity.
When your civilisation is at its peak, the only way is down …
The World was changed. Great evil roams the Landscape and the earth rebels against itself.
You are humanity‘s last hope, Sacred Guardians wielding immense powers.
Courtroom Clash is finished, gentlemen. Start your five-year law studies.
My feedback group is the proud Unicron.
Blurb:
OBJECTION!
A crime has been committed! Now you, an ace lawyer, must fight for your client and justice! Investigate the crime for facts and evidence which you will use as a weapon in the final court to sentence the defendant to punishment… or set him free.
You have been sent back in time to avert the apocalyptic world you have come from. The clock is ticking and there is no room for error. Will you have the stomach for it? Will you lose all you hold sacred? In the end how far would you go to save the world?
Woo, final edition. Really final this time. Thanks for the logo, Daniel! (Group Omega represent!)
FADE
As the Palace fleet approaches the new star, something that hasn‘t happened in hundreds of years, the fragile alliances and agreements between the Palaces are increasingly coming under strain.
You are a citizen of one of the Palaces, one that‘s currently at war.
And you‘re not just any citizen.
Your friends and neighbors don‘t know it, but you are a spook.
You are an elite agent trained to use drugs to destroy and create memories. This is how wars are fought in the Palace fleet.
The front lines of the war are memories, and enemy spooks will remodel yours if you let your guard down.
In a society without violence, power is the ability to change your enemy‘s mind.
What Mike (and others) have said. This is an emergency first draft, planned to be updated sometime in the next four hours.
This came from CURRENCY, DRUG, and MEMORY. I belong to OMEGA Team.
”…and then you die.“ is a game about life at the end of life; it is about an end to the work of breathing; it is about how petty life becomes when time is at its most scarce. It‘s about getting the largest helping of creamed corn before losing your last shred of dignity at tonight‘s sponge bath. Players roleplay life in a retirement home; one character will kick the big golden bucket before the end of the session. How it happens and what it means is up to the players.
Right… not as done as I‘d like, but done enough for now.
Includes character sheets and scene records, and several premade characters used in the game play examples.
Shards of a Dying God
(Sacred, Inconsistency, Thread)
Blurb:
A God is dying, adrift in the waters of forgetfulness.
Shards of the God‘s consciousness, aspects of its memory, struggle to remember its existence by resolving the intricate threads of myth to define the nature of the God, and thereby delineate its Sacred Story.
Shards of a Dying God weaves a tale of the God‘s struggle to reconcile its own story, reviewing the process of its Becoming to decide what it has Become.
Blurb:
Something has changed in the world recently. Ancient runes in the museums started to work, rune-like modern symbols proved to be really good and usable runes. Secret orders of magi are amazed as they try to understand this new power: after thousand years of leaking Magic rose entirely.
You find yourself all dressed up, and standing in the mist of strange people at a Victorian ball. You have this ominous feeling that something unpleasant is going to happen â?“ suddenly people will snap and blood will spill â?“ because this has happened before … has it not? What you do not know is that you are a test subject in a demonic experiment; a study to see what will happen when you play around with your memory â?“ when your mind is shattered.
The Novikov Principle
Group Lambda
Sacred, Thread, Inconsistency
„Tourists from the future tour major events in history. But the past isn‘t all it used to beâ?¦“
Blurb:
The world is in a state of spiritual upheaval and philosophical evolution. The players take the role of heroic spirits who manifest in physical form to examine, judge, and fight to resolve the inconsistencies between different beliefs.
Ingredients used: Palace, Currency, Drug and Memory
Heard about role-playing games but never played one?
Then this is the book for you, it will lead you into a world of Space Opera adventure through easily learned sections of story and rules. You can play any style of space game from Star Wars to Serenity, or stay in the universe of the Palace Combine and memory altering drugs.
Ingredients used: Palace, Currency, Memory and kinda-sorta Drug but not really.
The Land of a Thousand King is another world, full of magic and adventure. These two books will guide you and your friends on a wonder-full journey to this new world. Learn to fly with the Eagles! Play with the Wolves! Travel down the Bright River and maybe even fall in love! You can do all this and more in the Land of a Thousand Kings.
Four players, one character, limitless possibilites. Reality offers limitless possibilities for magic, for life, and for conflict. Now, one Problem demands the same person in four different Threads of reality solve it. Four characters will start the same and end up very different.
Hypodroids, androids without the ability to form memories, roam a landscape of ruin. Stuck between an overlord class of true androids and a slave class of man, the hypodroids fight amongst themselves for what power lies within their grasp. You are a hypodroid, recently activated and let loose on a world that doesnâ?™t need you. Do you embrace society or try to destroy it?
How We Met is a game about how a couple overcame all obstacles to be together. The game helps you to tell a story, which comes from the memory of the two main characters. Inconsistencies are bound to appear as the character‘s perceptions of events clash. No one can know what really happened, but they can look at the strength of the relationship that was formed.
This game is about protecting the things you care about. You live in an isolated and tight-knit mountain community called Millebourne. The people are quaint, and mostly farmers or shepherds. The climate is harsh and made all the harsher by the terrors that surround this small, stockaded community. Dire wolves, infernal spirits, and other horrific abominations roam in the shadows in the forests and mountains in Vercove, France. It falls on the shoulders of the Huntsmen to protect the community from these dangers. Though the title of Huntsman is a badge of distinction, it is not a badge of honor. Every Huntsman that ever lived has died at a young age leaving behind a loved one and a grateful community.
You had the courage to defy the oppressive government. Now they have your body, but what they really want is your mind. Will you be able to resist, or will you wind up being â?œrehabilitatedâ?? like so many other unfortunates before you.
Grassroots: The Role-Playing Game of Public Opinion
The fate of the world is not decided on the battlefield or in fistfights, but on television, in newspapers, on the Internet. Great warriors do battle not with sword and gun, but with lie and soundbyte. Recreate your favorite political dramas, where there‘s little physical violence, but the ‚action‘ comes in techno-music-soundtracked montages of people typing on computers and the drama of meeting trenchcoated informants in dim parking lots. From The West Wing to All The King‘s Men, from Erin Brockovich to Primary Colors, Grassroots recreates it all. Will you fight the good fight, using honesty as the best policy, or will you lower yourself into the realm of muckrakers and sleaze artists? Are you willing to fix an election so the best man wins? How many favors will you call in, how much trouble will you risk, to succeed? Will you go so far, only to realize that you‘ve sacrificed everything you used to hold sacred?
There are two sides to every story… but the story is written by the victors. And it doesn‘t matter who wins… as long as people -think- you won.
(Note: The character sheet provided is not my work; I specified the design but someone else made it; therefore, I am not including it in the competition but am providing it here for completeness/archival purposes)