Brain Fizz, Episode 3

I've got my next game sorted out. It's none of the ones I've mentioned before. (That's just kind of how I roll.) What I've found, over the few months that I've been releasing games, is that I have a load of ideas at once and they all bubble and boil around, and then one just BURSTS to the surface and I know that it's the next game. The game in question has the working title of ORC HIJINKS YES and it's an adaptation of a Dark Heresy hack I've run a couple of times where the characters all play Ork Commandos on a special mission into enemy territory. Of course, because they're orks, they get into all sorts of incredibly violent trouble, and everyone has a good laugh as a result. I'm adapting it to a fantasy setting for copyright reasons. There are six pre-gen characters, and a few missions, and - if everything goes to plan - a map which will let you plan your own ridiculously circuitous routes through the city. One of the pre-gen characters is a stack of five goblins; instead of wound boxes, the Goblin player gets names and backstories and just crosses them off every time they take damage. It's a very basic system, and - at present - it encourages really daft plans; like One Last Job, there's a pool of dice which represents the awareness, and preparedness, of the city guards. Every time the orcs do something obvious, it ticks up by one... and every time they have a go at being cunning or stealthy, it ticks down by one. Of course, Orcs aren't subtle creatures, so every character gets the ability - once per game - to grab all the dice in the suspicion pool and roll them as part of their hand before returning the pool to the minimum size. It's a fairly organic way of dealing with distractions and gambits, it encourages players to ramp up the danger in exchange for a big payoff, and it gives them a pressure-release if scenes are getting a bit dangerous for them to handle. The art is being handled by Tim Wilkinson Lewis (http://yeshiveoverlord.com/), who writes and draws Yes, Hive Overlord and is a friend of mine; I reckon his mad scrawlings will fit perfectly with the tone of the game. Plus, no-one's better at drawing goblins than he is. I'm busy with Spirits Walk in Melbourne this weekend, but I should be able to write it up soon - and I'm on the lookout for playtesters, too, so if you're interested in giving the game a go, leave me a comment and I'll sort something out for you. - G