YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS!  WE’VE REALLY OUTDONE OURSELVES, BRINGING YOU SOME OF THE MOST PROVOCATIVE, EXCITING PLAYSTORMING OF THE YEAR!  THIS BLOG POST IS DESTINED TO BECOME A MAGNIFICENT MILESTONE IN THE MARVEL AGE OF PLAYSTORMING!!

Whoa, sorry.  I’ve been reading a lot of old Stan Lee comics lately.  Let me start that over.

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to make a game based on something I love: Silver Age comic books.  We did a playstorm and it was good, but I felt like something wasn’t quite right.  The game was fun but it wasn’t quite doing the things I wanted it to do.  I put it on the back burner.  Then, six months later, we made MonkeyDome.  A game that, if you’ll excuse a boast, does some pretty awesome things.  Now I am revisiting my old idea and playstorming to answer the question: can I start with MonkeyDome and end up with the Silver Age comic book game that I am dreaming of?  READ ON, FAITHFUL FANS, AND FIND OUT!

Silver Age Comics and Me

When I was a kid, I loved going to the comic book store to pick up the new issue of Batman or Spider-Man or X-Men.  My dad would give me an extra couple of bucks to get him a back-issue of World’s Finest or The Flash or something from when he used to read comics in the 60s and 70s.  I would always read both and, before long, I was preferring the older comic books.  The newer comics consisted of Wolverine and Batman repeatedly showing off how bad-ass and serious they were, and for me that got old kinda fast.  But in the comic books from the 60s and 70s, there was never a dull moment!  Superman was competing in intergalactic Olympics on other planets!  The Avengers were battling Lava Men inside the Earth’s crust!  The Flash’s rogues gallery, consisting of Captain Cold, Mirror Master, Gorilla Grodd, and many others, were teaming up to defeat him!  Professor X and Magneto were competing for the loyalty of mutants with outrageous super powers!  How could a kid like me not love this stuff?

One specific thing I loved and still love about the Silver Age was how the super heroes would take a seemingly limited super power and come up with a hundred and one creative ways to use it.  Take The Flash for example.  The Flash’s super power is that he is super fast.  So obviously he can use his super speed to catch bad guys who are getting away, or knock out a bad guy before they have time to react.  But how about running across water?  Or up the side of a building?  Or through time?!?  How about running in a circle so fast he created whirlwinds?  Or (this one really stretches it) running so fast he has infra-red vision?

A Game is Born?

Silver age super heroes finding creative new ways to use their powers is a lot of fun.  So about a year ago I asked myself: would it make a fun game?  Lord knows that just because something is cool in a movie or a book or a comic doesn’t mean it will also necessarily be fun in a tabletop game.  Games need choices.  Games need tension.  Games need a lot more than a cool idea.

Well if you’ve got a concept for a game and you want to see if it’s got legs, there’s one quick and easy thing you can do: playstorm!

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The process of co-creating, co-writing, and, most importantly, playing MonkeyDome blew my fucking mind.

It was a horrible mess. Gray matter everywhere.

Took me a whole week to piece it all back together, which was a feat due to my complete lack of king’s horses or king’s men.

This festering wound in my skull, along with a particularly eye-opening and downright thrilling Western mod of MonkeyDome we played, dead tired, on the train to JiffyCon laid the groundwork for a new game I’m tentatively calling Swords Without Master (or Sword Buddies, who knows.)

A Tale of Two Rogues

Over the past few months, I have been immensely enjoying Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar series. Some of the stories are distant memories recalled from the mists of my youth; many of them, brand new. These books rekindled in me the lusty fires of sword & sorcery. And what’s more, I recognized my gaming desires tucked inside the text: a tantalizing blend of humor, thrills, and wonder. I had discovered that, perhaps not by accident, I had grown into the fiction that gave birth to this hobby. (more…)

Yes, that’s right.  MonkeyDome.  Didn’t get your free copy at Jiffycon?  Download it right here:

Monkeydome Printable PDF

MonkeyDome Screen PDF

MonkeyDome is the Imagination Sweatshop’s “Game in a Jiffy” for JiffyCon 2009.  Last year it was Trial and Terror.  This year it’s MonkeyDome.  This is becoming a bit of a habit for us.  It’s a “Game in a Jiffy” because it was created entirely from conception to publication during the week prior to the June 6th, 2009, JiffyCon where it was distributed for free.  We have since corrected some typos and added a chapter that was originally left out due to time constraints, and now you can download it via the links above!

What is MonkeyDome, you ask?

MonkeyDome is a schizophrenic game of shifting tones and harsh lessons in the cruel world of the future where life is ruled by Grim Violence or Zany Action, and either may strike at any moment. Sometimes you just got to swing that shovel to see if you can end a man with a sickening crunch, or knock him out with “Dong!”

Together you and your friends will be making Survivors who are pitted against the crème-de-la-crème of postapocalyptic horrors, cannibals, and marauding hordes for their space in this ravaged world. Survivors who’ve learned harsh lessons and seen the worst life has to offer. Survivors who do whatever it takes to stay alive. Survivors occasionally played by Brendan Fraser.

Still need convincing that MonkeyDome is awesome?  How about this cool flowchart?

And it’s got these guys:

Epidiah Ravachol, Jim Sullivan, Emily Care Boss, Jason Keeley, and John Stavropoulos designed, wrote and developed MonkyDome. Special Thanks to Michael Cooper who helped conceive of the game, Scott LeMien for his beautiful cover art, and Terry Hope Romero for her assistance with editing.