Twas a good year for the ISS at GenCon.

Trial & Terror: SVU nominated for an ENnie (alas we didn’t get it, but the nomination was a thrill).

Sign in Stranger debuts at the Pirate Jenny booth and sells out.

Time & Temp debuts, gets the nod from Robin Laws and practically sells out (I’ve got four copies left and four original playtesters who definitely deserve copies, so that worked out nicely). Soon you’ll see it for sale on IPR.

All of these have been playstormed to one degree or another at the Imagination Sweatshop. It’s the year of the storm!

And veteran ISSer Jason Keeley was there with Pantheon Press stuff, running games and spreading the word.

The polls are open! Vote here!

Do not forget Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit for Best Free Product!

Do not forget these other worthy games!

Exclamation point!

We’re part of a revolution!

I know, we’re just as surprised as you are.

It’s Summer Revolution and this shit’s getting hot!

A bunch of indie roleplaying games are up for ENnie awards, many of which are personal friends of ours, some I even personally walked over to the ENnies booth last GenCon and made sure they submitted, and they all want to you to know about them. They’ve made a list. A good list. A list with Trial & Terror on it. Check out that list!

Voting is not for another week (don’t worry, we’ll remind you).

Now is the time for action! Now is the time to spread the word!

That’s right, Trial & Terror is up for an ENnie in the category of Best Free Product! And it appears to be the best hard-hitting game about supernatural crimes of passion ripped from today’s fictional headline in the category. At least of all of the ones in the category that were created in one week.

So we got that going for us.

This nomination is quite an honor for us, and we have to once again thank our amazing artists who made it all look like a real, grown-up game: John Carimando, Scott LeMien, and Andrew DeFelice.

Expect to hear from us soon about rocking votes and whatnot. In the mean time check out the game if you haven’t already. It’s free. Seriously.

As most of you know, Eppy, Jim, and I are part of the nerdnyc.com community. A couple of times a year, we nerdnycers rent out a big space and have ourselves a  little mini gaming convention. Sure, a lot of us game together outside of these events, but it’s always fun to fill up a room and maybe play new games with people you don’t hang out with too often.

This weekend was Thanksnerding, our pre-turkey day occasion, and I ran an impromptu game of Trial & Terror for two members of the community, including fabulous contributing artist John C. Although John has run the game before, I think this was his first time playing it. And it marked the first time I’ve seen the players *lose* a case!

The plot revolved around prostitutes being sacrificed by a cult that worshiped the demon queen of the succubi. It got a little prime-time unfriendly when the rookie detective went undercover to try to infiltrate the cult in a little Eyes Wide Shut-esque scene. Luckily, his “Purity” trait allowed him to resist the temptations of the flesh. They eventually rounded up the main cultists, but due to some unlucky dice for the players and some lucky dice for me during Jury Deliberation, they all got off scot-free.

Such a loss presents a perfect opportunity for a follow-up case if were playing a campaign, but I don’t know if we’ll ever see the return of these particular characters…

As promised, for those of you who can’t join us at JiffyCon, here’s your free copy of Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit.

As I’m writing this, I’m still suffering a bit from yesterday’s all night rush to the presses. It’s actually two something in the morning the Friday after, but if all goes well this post won’t show up until the very brink of Free RPG Day. So please forgive me if I seem a bit scatterbrained.

Just over a week ago, this game was not much more than a tentative title on a piece of scrap paper with 9 other game ideas vying for our attention. We winnowed out the candidates we thought we could actually finish in a week and then fate in the form of a d4 pointed its gnarled claw at Trial & Terror: SVU (whose original title escapes me at the moment).

The week has been tremendous fun for me. Exhausting, but a hell of a lot of fun. And I’m sure Jason and Jim had similar experiences. Right now, I’m just kind of dazed that it’s all over. Well, probably not exactly over. I think this one’s got legs and I’m very interested in seeing where this game takes us next. But for now, the experiment is a success and we couldn’t be prouder of our little Game in a Jiffy–rough spots and all.

We hope you enjoy it as well. If you have any questions about how to play, or any
tales of how it worked for you and your friends, we’d love to hear about it.

And a huge thank you to all our artists who exceeded expectations with an entirely unreasonable deadline. Thank you John Carimando, Scott LeMien, and Andrew DeFelice! You made us look far more professional than we are.

illustration by Scott LeMien

As you know if you read our previous post, last week we had the crazy idea to create a game in a jiffy for Jiffycon. So crazy it just might work!!

So we got together last Thursday, picked a premise and started playstorming. Then we got together again yesterday to test out what we had so far and playstorm some new ideas. Tonight was our third game, more of a playtest than a playstorm. Before us lies the task of writing up the rules and printing them before we head up to Massachusetts on Friday.

We’re having a blast! We love the mechanics we’ve come up with, but we also love the premise, conceived by our own Jason “herzwesten” Keeley. In a world where monsters and humans live side by side, you need special laws to keep the peace, and you need special detectives and lawyers to enforce those laws. You will play those detectives and lawyers in Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit! Perhaps a Vampire has been feeding on humans without a license. Perhaps a werewolf was a victim of a hate crime. Perhaps a ghost has taken the law into his own hands in the case of his own murder. You will have to investigate the crime, find the suspect, make the arrest, and convict them in a court of law.

Here are some highlights from tonight’s game:

• The detectives met with a mummy real estate tycoon whose son had just been murdered
• The detectives took a trip to Little Transylvania (a neighborhood of Manhattan) to meet a vampire contact
• The prosecutors introduced the recent telephone records of an ancient undead monster as evidence
• Though the prosecutors failed to get the conviction for the charge of “unlawful summoning and binding”, the suspect received the maximum penalty for first degree murder!

Time to air out the ol’ sweatshop as it’s pretty stuffy in here. We kind of lost the keys to the front door while we were on our jetsetting vacation to Europe with smart and ultrarich supermodels. But now we’re back and…uh, we might need to get some new employees…

But first, the news! Next week is the inestimable Jiffycon and the ISS is making a grand appearance! Jim had the brilliant and crazy idea to whip a game for the con “in a jiffy” that we could hand out. You know, as proof of this whole playstorming thing.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to do! Last night, we playstormed a brand-new game. By next week we should have a the rules in physical paper form to give away at the con. Of course, if you can’t make it to the con, we’ll be posting the rules here on this site the week after.

Finally, here’s a little taste of what’s to come:

Within the organizations of criminal justice, all people, be they living or undead, are represented by two separate yet equally vital groups: the detectives who investigate supernatural offenses, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.