Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;672791Which is kind of puzzling to me. I mean, I really don't get what all these people find so appealing about this totally unappealing game.

Vampire 2.0.

Quote from: Benoist;672802Vampire 2.0.

Except instead of a romance-gothic power fantasy, this seems more of a leper power fantasy.

Quote from: TristramEvans;672804Except instead of a romance-gothic power fantasy, this seems more of a leper power fantasy.

Sure. The game tries to feed on what it perceives as the new "cool" costume/LARP thing going on, so while Vampire fed on the Lestat fad and the Goths and all that, I Am Zombie tries to feed off the "Zombie" craze and people putting on Zombie makeup and all that.

I think the real question many people who could be interested in the game are asking themselves is not how this game can be played like Vampire, but rather what makes this game BETTER than Vampire. I know that's the question I'm asking myself, anyway, and none of the things like chips and cards and all that make me think "Holy shit I've GOT to try this game this will replace my Vampire by Night!" What I'm seeing is a meddley of previous themes MRH explored before, from faction politics to keeping one's humanity to surviving in a corrupted world, but I'm not seeing how this new game does it better than what I got with Masquerade, Apocalypse et al.

All that said, I hope Mark gets a shot at trying to make this project work.

Quote from: TristramEvans;672804Except instead of a romance-gothic power fantasy, this seems more of a leper power fantasy.

A lot of them saw "You're Lestat!" when what's written is "your leper stat".

Quote from: smiorgan;672816A lot of them saw "You're Lestat!" when what's written is "your leper stat".

Q: What did the Forsaken say when he left the Undercity brothel?
A: "Keep the tip."

Quote from: One Horse Town;665058Yeah, it is sorta taking the piss out of twilight, i think.

The lucid zombie thing is quite old - Bob in Day of the Dead, although he can't speak, is probably the first on film in modern times that i can think of.

There's also Colin and Falling Apart to name a couple more recent (ish) films to have the zombies being lucid. There's also one about zombie cops that i can't remember the name of.

Also "DeadHeads" - assuming no one else has pointed this out yet. Still working my way through the thread...

Quote from: One Horse Town;665058Yeah, it is sorta taking the piss out of twilight, i think.

The lucid zombie thing is quite old - Bob in Day of the Dead, although he can't speak, is probably the first on film in modern times that i can think of.

There's also Colin and Falling Apart to name a couple more recent (ish) films to have the zombies being lucid. There's also one about zombie cops that i can't remember the name of.

Anyhoo, it isn't uncommon on film at the moment, which is why i said i understand the timing of the game and why it isn't exactly trend-setting.

There was In The Flesh on the BBC recently, too; OK, more a social drama, but it wouldn't have worked as well without the undead angle. Worth checking out.

and it's funded, 5 days before deadline. A lot later than I would have guessed a month ago.

I hope, for the sake of the people who'll post good money into this project, that the game will be good and on time. Ish. As much as a KS project can be on time.

MRH posted a lenghty post on G+ recently, declaring the shortcomings of the character sheet.
The entire tirade was equal to the best of nonsense this very site can come up with. Unfortunately, I think he meant every word.
So, no character sheets for zombies. Character cards(that can be arranged in order, according to the player's wishes) are much better.

It might turn out as a very good game. but I think it will be a very good game for very, very few people.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;674533and it's funded, 5 days before deadline. A lot later than I would have guessed a month ago.

I hope, for the sake of the people who'll post good money into this project, that the game will be good and on time. Ish. As much as a KS project can be on time.

The "please help me out" posts on Google and all the talk on the KS page reeks of desperation and disorganized naivete. Which surprises me because you would think Mark has access to friends who could advise him on KS ethics, best practices, etc.

First, there are PILES of grammatical errors on the KS. Not exactly smart. You can't be bothered to proof read your pitch?

Second, they've hallmarked 6 months for play-testing. In his "please help me" pitch, he mentions how Vampire clans didn't come about until later in the development of the game. How people didn't see the awesome, etc. until later. Maybe he's right. Maybe the Zombie thing of this flavor will take off for him, but I'm skeptical. This think does not look very stable IMHO.

Finally, the whole card based character sheet is weird. Not sure how well that will be received. Lots of fiddly bits for a "party" game. I like the Grind house esthetic, but it's probably not that popular.

Which sucks. I really liked Vampire and I thought MRH's stuff was super creative. I was kind of secretly hoping this would tickle my fancy. Unfortunately it's instead pushing all the wrong buttons.

YMMV, just my two cents...

"Dot" Hagen still has failed to deliver any product, and hasn't been active on KS since November.

Here is his excuse from his Facebook page:

QuoteHi everyone, sorry about the long, long hiatus. It lasted far longer than I ever intended it to be, but it served a purpose, which I will explain in just a bit. But first let me explain why I needed a vacation.

Facebook is an amazing place, but when you have as many friends as I do it becomes difficult to get serious work done. Before my break I was sometimes getting messaged a 100 times and a day and distracted by this or that the whole day long. I became addicted to the intensity of the constant stimulation and my creative work began to suffer. I knew I needed to switch things out somehow, and find a new way to work. A new way to focus.

Secondly, I AM ZOMBIE was stalled. I had released a complete rules book, background book and character cards and I was expecting a big surge of activity and interest as different groups began to playtest. But that did not happen... I become more than a bit distraught and depressed (I am a temperamental artist type after all). Day by day I began to slip deeper and deeper into a big black hole. Emotionally I was at all all time low in terms of this project.

Intellectually, however, I realized that something was wrong with game, not the playtesters. You guys have been great, incredibly involved and VERY supportive. I decided to take a week off and just FIGURE THINGS OUT. In the end it took a bit more than week, but I have indeed figured things out.

As many of you know I am used to having trouble with my game in playtesting. Infamously my first Vampire playtest group quit the game in disgust, saying it was unplayable. The first Wraith playtest group had to disband because of "paranormal activity". In any case, I knew something was wrong with the system or the setting and I had to fix it.

My analysis began with the game system itself. I realized that as much as I like dice pool systems, and I LOVE the elegance of this particular dice pool system with its different colored D6, that it was a major hindrance for people playing the game.

Secondly I realized that my own playtester were not choosing cards that had no art, they just didn't "Grok" the blank cards. Yet I knew we were a long ways from getting all the art, and I couldn't substitute other art from the internet in... Lucid Zombie art just doesn't exist, and anything else would be confusing and distracting.

Over the next week as we deconstructed the game layer by layer it became obvious that we need a new game system and we needed a way to playtest the game using cards with art on them. At the same time I was getting feelers back from various game companies about the Axiom game system. They were interested in the ideas of character cards, they just didn't get the idea of a game where "you play a zombie?" (I would be upset about that kind of reaction, but I'm used to it, its exactly the same reaction I got when I come up with Vampire). They wanted a more "approachable" setting, an example of how they worked in a paradigm they could visualize.

So we began working on a new game, a game through which we could completely, methodically, and intensely playtest a new game system. I decided that fantasy was the archetypical RPG, plus there was a ton of fantasy art online we could borrow for use on a set of playtest cards.

One night I had a dream about a character who kept getting reincarnated so I called the setting Incarnate.

Very quickly while working on simplifying the D6 system I realized that the game was TOO innovative. This is a problem I run into often. People who do not work in a creative field are often confused by this concept, they think the more unique something is the better. The truth is however, you can only move people so far in so much time, if you are going to be brilliantly innovative in one way, you need to be familiar and conventional in another.

So that when I decided too (wait for it) to move to a D20 based game system... Yes, please don't scream, its true. Its the most familiar way to resolve events in the world of roleplaying, millions of people have already played a game using the system. If you are going to blow peoples minds by having character cards instead of character classes, then you need to give them them something they understand deeply to hang on to as they go for the ride of their life.

Anyway, we whipped up 30 fantasy cards and wrote up a new system, and it ended up taking a lot long than I thought it would. But then something amazing happened, playtesters went nuts and new gamers started showing up out of nowhere. For the first time in Georgia we were able to playtest a game without having to bribe people with food or wine.

Bottom line, people loved the new system. It mixed the radically new with the deeply familiar in a way that was very approachable and easy to understand. All the stuff that slows down a 3.5, 4e, or Pathfinder game was eliminated, like charts and looking things up. Everything you need was on the cards. The games system was a still Axiom (in fact it was shocking how easy it was to convert it over) and the cards looks very much the same as with D6 IAZ. Almost immediately I wrote a new D20 set of Axiom rules for IAZ as well and tried a game, however without any card art all but the most sophisticated and experienced players were still completely lost. So we kept working on the Incarnate game and the D2o Axiom System.

Without ever realizing it a few weeks had gone by without me really noticing. I was so happy to be not be interrupted every five minutes, of being able to focus on ONE project... a new game system and a new setting.

Then the creative muse just completely took over and we started adding more and more cards and more and more setting to the new game. Its simply what one does when one is designing a game... you focus intently on the project at hand. I think, also, I just really needed a break from the internet... and people.

Then I threw out my back, but that a whole other story...

I am not naturally a social person. I love people, but in relatively small doses compared to most. From the age of 8 to 17 I grew up in a house in a woods, with no other kids living nearby. I learned to entertain myself, to live in a world of book, thoughts and dreams. In college I managed to become a much more social person, well know to anyone who has bought me a beer, but I am still always that boy who lives in the woods.

However, I am a grown man now, and now that I have had my vacation I am ready to rejoin the world. Not just willing, looking forward to it. I welcome your input and dialogue with you. I am restored FULLY to my multi-tasking, cloud jumping, frantic and wide thinking self.

Please accept my full apologies for simply disappearing, I wish I could say it won't happen again, but in a year or so it probably will. By signing up for this group you wanted a front row seat to the creative process, and this is part of it. Creative people aren't usually vibrant leaders or especially business minded, we tend to be a little strange, and inconsistent and unpredictable. It just goes with the work. But, sincerely, I do apologize. It wasn't fair, it wasn't smart but its just what I had to do. I truly am sorry if it annoyed or made your life difficult in any way.

That said I do have a Holiday Gift for you all. The Incarnate game is ready for you to play it. Since its a fantasy game there isn't a whole lot that NEEDS to be explained about the setting, we all know pretty much what it is all about. We've got over 70 fully illustrated cards for you to choose from (just pick 7 cards!) and a succinct set of rules. I also have a introduction to the world/game we created as well, which is now called: Of Things Unknown. (A Shakespeare quote.)

In terms of the cards, just download all the file, load up on a memory stick and bring it to your local print shop. These days almost any shop can do it, they will collate them to whatever format they want and give you a finished set of cards. They charged me about $14 for 72 cards.

And this is what he has to say on his other stalled kickstarter, Democracy:

QuoteI was going to post a full update today but I decided I needed yet another night to think about my words and rarefy them to a unique level of profound sublimity wildly unfamiliar to my creative Loki. However, you first need to know – my splendiferous, so uncherubic crazies – that the game shipment is nearly there. Things are not only, at long last, underway, but there was an serious reason, health-wise (I haven't been well) for me to be off-line and out-of- touch for such a elongated interlude.

But first hear this – loud and clear – I'd rather send my kids to community college than abrogate a contract. No joke. I'd never leave a gamer and his wad stranded, ever. Never have, never will. Democracy is on its way.

So calm the f**k down. Subside. Please please plese

Full post when I wake up...

And one day later on I Am Zombie:

QuoteHi everyone, sorry about the long absence but it was unavoidable and for a pretty serious reason. This is not something I wanted to make public, but I've been convinced that I need to come clean with what I consider to be an intensely private matter. To cut to the chase I've been having some serious problems with my health. Any rumors that I had a heart attack are absolutely false, but I'm told it was a rather close thing.

Shortly before Christmas I was hospitalized with because of a "hypertensive emergency" (my blood pressure was 220/140) and I was diagnosed with a type of heart condition I still don't know how to spell. I am so very fortunate that I was monitoring my pressure on a daily basis, or it might have turned out much worse that it did.

They wanted to keep me in the hospital for a week or two but I refused because the internet was just way too slow (yes, pretty stupid) and then I ended up staying entirely off line anyway. My very physically-fit uncle died of a similar condition last year so it was a very intense and existentially frightening wake-up call. The doctors I saw later got me new mediation, put me in rehabilitation and made me promise to avoid anything that might add stress to my life, including the web. They certainly made clear to me it was only a matter of time if I didn't change my life-style.

So when I got home I transformed my life from top to bottom. I began, and have maintained, a low calorie and super low-salt and low-fat diet and I have lost close to 25 pounds so far. I've just gotten back from a full check-up and things are looking much better than I expected. I am feeling great. My blood pressure, with the help of yet another new medication, is now down to an a shockingly low l110/70. I am hoping to be at my former fighting weight by my birthday in August, as well as completely off medication.

At the beginning of the process I was completely off my game, I threw my back, was sleeping a lot, getting sick, and was lethargic and depressed. I don't mind telling you it was very tough - real change is very, very difficult whatever the different varieties of TV faith healers like to tell you.

To be honest I went into a total panic mode, I thought I might die. It was a strange feeling, I've been in war zones and that kind of danger never really phased me that much, I wasn't reckless just peculiarly unperturbed – however THIS wasn't an exciting experience, it was miserable and tedious. It was clear however that I had to turn myself into someone else. I had to completely change my personality, for the sake of my kids if not myself. I had to let myself be scared, fear being the most powerful motivator in the world.

So now I'm a new man, no more wine at dinner or after-dinner Scotch, no more French fries or fried anything, no more lattes or beer or eating out for that matter... Now I actually stand at my desk all day, instead of sitting on the stool 80% of the time.

Funny thing is, turning things around was really hard thing to do, but then suddenly it just became easy. SInce I'm not really a social person without food and booze, it' been tough to maintain any sort of social life, on or offline, but I'm working on it. (Btw, don't worry, once the weight is off and my pressure stablized I will still be drinking at conventions, just not in excess).

For those who are interested I used techniques I call the Roleplaying Diet (or alternatively the Method Acting diet) which is a total immersion, trained revulsion/attraction, be the person you want to be, self-programing program. I worked for me with variety of things, so I think it as work with pretty much anything. If you are interested or need help with something in particular, just let me know.

Yesterday I made popcorn for the first time and added one tiny dash of salt, but when I tasted it I spit it out, I am so unused to salt that it tasted terrible to me. Pretty cool. I'm into this.

Now that I am post checkup, post lethargy, and most importantly back from the States and post Mr. Mom (I was a primary caregiver since my wife had to stay at home to run the country), I am back on track with work. Which for us here means I AM ZOMBIE.

I was very sad and depressed about the tepid response to my call for a round of playtesting on IAZ. I only got ONE playtest report, one, and that really sent me for a loop, it was so very depressing.

Here's the thing, I can't really continue with the game design without feedback... the kind feedback you only get from Blind testing (in other words playtesting where I am not there running the game and making it work through strength of will.) I do understand, its hard to get your group excited about playing a game with mostly blank cards, but... Well, Mark has finished half the cards, so it should be a lot easier now. Moreover, I am going to write a begining scenario, so its totally a breeze to run your first game.

I am going to spend a week on the setting materials now and meanwhile I'm going to figure out how to "encourage" people to playtest. We are thinking of having a contest where we offer the top 10 playtest reports (in terms of length and insight) free cards, as in, get your face on one. However I am not sure how everyone would feel about that, so I want to check in with everyone about it.

In terms of the new D20 system, I played it using the fantasy version with my kids and my nieces and nephews (ages 6-14) over Xmas and it works really well. It's a very smooth and unique system, all the referencing of books and rules that normally goes on... puff, vanished. Its all on the cards.

However, fantasy ain't horror and we need to playtest I AM ZOMBIE for me to be able to do the rewrite of the setting materials and send it to Mark to be laid out. This HAS to happen, I refuse to send out a RPG without extensive playtesting.

So, sorry to not be around the last month or so, I really hope you do understand. Moreover, I hope we can really being an intense discussion about the game and how to perfect it, starting now.

yours,

Mark

I suspect Pundit is going to have a field day with those three snippets.

That's a little bizarre.  

He hasn't posted an update since November 1st on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/make-believegames/i-am-zombie-field-manual-rpgx/posts

There's a lot of people who are passive backers.  If he's getting a 10% turnout of playtesters, for example, then based on the number of backers, he's probably going to get less than 40 people total.  I think he should be glad he's got the funding.  

He needs to at least give an update on Kickstarter--maybe he'd get more feedback if he did.  I understand if projects prefer another venue but at the very least summary updates get posted on Kickstarter on a high-level basis.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;664977No, but I will kickstarter a legal name change instead of that*ridiculous name of*his.

Just call him Splat:hagen or whatever floats your boat.

What a clusterfuck.

I could see this one from miles away, though. More reliable people have had enough trouble fulfilling their crowdfunded promises.

Moral of the story: Don't back unless the game is already done. Don't start your own, unless your game is ready to go.

(Not that I joined this one. Hell no. I have my own "becoming a zombie" setting, Dead Man's Land, and I don't need another, more pretentious one alongside it.)